LPage  17. 


THE     IDIOT 


JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 

AUTHOll    OF 

'COFFEE  ANI>  REPARTEE"  "THE  WATER  GHOST,  AND  OTHERS' 
"  THBEE  WEEKS  IN  POLITICS  "  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW     YORK 

HARPER   &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
1895 


Copyright,  1895,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  rights  reserved. 


TO 

WILLIAM  K.  OTIS 


405780 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


"  CERTAINLY.       I    ASKED    FOR    ANOTHER    CUP  "      .  Frontispiece 

"THE  NUISANCE  OF  HAVING  TO  PA?"    .     .     .  Facing  page    4 

"  SHE       COULD      NOT      POSSIBLY       GET       ABOARD 

AGAIN" "              8 

"DEMANDS  TICKETS  FOR  TWO" "        18 

"  THEY     ARE     GIVEN     TO     REHEARSING     AT     ALL 

HOURS" "  26 

"  '  HA  !  HA  !  I  HAVE  HIM  NOW  !'  "  .  .  .  .  "  28 
"HAS  YOUR  FRIEND  COMPLETED  HIS  ARTICLE 

ON  OLD  JOKES-?" "  32 

THEY  DEPARTED '  38 

"YOU  FISH  ALL  DAY,  AND  HAVE  NO  LUCK"  .  "  42 

HE  COULD  BE  HEARD  THROWING  THINGS  ABOUT  "  44 

"HE  WAS  NOT  MURDERED" 50 

"  SUPERINTENDENT  SMITHERS  HAS  NOT  AB- 

SCONDKD  " 52 

THE    INSPIRED    BOARDER    PAID    HIS    BILL     ...  "58 

"i  KNOW  YOU  CAN'T,  BECAUSE  IT  ISN'T  THERE"  62 

"  YOU     CAN     MAKE     YOURSELF     HEARD     IN     SAN 

FRANCISCO  " "           68 

THE    PROPHETOGRAPH    .  "            70 


"I    GRASPKD    IT    IN    MY    TWO    HANDS  "         .       .       .    Facing  page   78 

"PIANO-PLAYING  ISN'T  ALWAYS  MUSIC"  .  .  "80 

"  THE  MOON  ITSELF  WILL  BK  USED "  .  .  .  .  "  84 

"DECLINES  TO  BE  RIDDEN" "  88 

"THE  BIBLIOMANIAC  WOULD  BE  RAISING 

BULBS" «  94 

"  DIDN'T  KNOW  ENOUGH  TO  CHOOSE  HIS  OWN 

FACE" "102 

"JANITORS  HAVE  TO  BE  SEEN  TO"  ....  "  106 

"MY   ELOQUENCE    FLOATED    UP    THE   AIR-SHAFT"  "         110 


THE    IDIOT 


FOR  some  weeks  after  the  happy  event 
which  transformed  the  popular  Mrs.  Smithers 
into  the  charming  Mrs.  John  Pedagog  all 
went  well  at  that  lady's  select  home  for  sin 
gle  gentlemen.  It  was  only  proper  that  dur 
ing  the  honey-moon,  at  least,  of  the  happy 
couple  hostilities  between  the  Idiot  and  his 
fellow-boarders  should  cease.  It  was  expect 
ing  too  much  of  mankind,  however,  to  look 
for  a  continued  armistice,  and  the  morning 
arrived  when  Nature  once  more  reasserted 
herself,  and  trouble  began.  Just  what  it  was 
that  prompted  the  remark  no  one  knows,  but 
it  happened  that  the  Idiot  did  say  that  he 
thought  that,  after  all,  life  on  a  canal-boat 
had  its  advantages.  Mr.  Pedagog,  who  had 
come  into  the  dining-room  in  a  slightly  irrita 
ble  frame  of  mind,  induced  perhaps  by  Mrs. 


Tedagbg's  insistence'  t'ha't  as  he  was  now  part 
proprietor  of  the  house  he  should  be  a  little 
more  prompt  in  ^making  his  contributions 
towards  its  maintenance,  chose  to  take  the  re 
mark  as  implying  a  reflection  upon  the  way 
things  were  managed  in  the  household. 

"Humph!"  he  said.  "I  had  hoped  that 
your  habit  of  airing  your  idiotic  views  had 
been  put  aside  for  once  and  for  all." 

"  Very  absurd  hope,  my  dear  sir,"  observed 
the  Idiot.  "  Views  that  are  not  aired  become 
musty.  Why  shouldn't  I  give  them  an  atmos 
pheric  opportunity  once  in  a  while  ?" 

"  Because  they  are  the  sort  of  views  to 
which  suffocation  is  the  most  appropriate 
end,"  snapped  the  School  -  Master.  "  Any 
man  who  asserts,  as  you  have  asserted,  that 
life  on  a  canal-boat  has  its  advantages,  ought 
to  go  further,  and  prove  his  sincerity  by  liv 
ing  on  one." 

"  I  can't  afford  it,"  said  the  Idiot,  meekly. 
"  It  isn't  cheap  by  any  manner  of  means.  In 
the  first  place,  you  can't  live  happily  on  a 
canal -boat  unless  you  can  afford  to  keep 
horses.  In  fact,  canal-boat  life  is  a  combina 
tion  of  the  most  expensive  luxuries,  since  it 
combines  yachting  and  driving  with  domes 
ticity.  Nevertheless,  if  you  will  put  your 


mind  on  it,  you  will  find  that  with  a  canal- 
boat  for  your  home  you  can  do  a  great  many 
things  that  you  can't  do  with  a  house." 

"  I  decline  to  put  my  mind  on  a  canal- 
boat,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog,  sharply,  passing  his 
coffee  back  to  Mrs.  Pedagog  for  another 
lump  of  sugar,  thereby  contributing  to  that 
good  lady's  discomfiture,  since  before  their 
marriage  the  mere  fact  that  the  coffee  had 
been  poured  by  her  fair  hand  had  given  it  all 
the  sweetness  it  needed  ;  or  at  least  that  was 
what  the  School-Master  had  said,  and  more 
than  once  at  that. 

"You  are  under  no  obligation  to  do  so," 
the  Idiot  returned.  "  Though  if  I  had  a  mind 
like  yours  I'd  put  it  on  a  canal-boat  and  have 
it  towed  away  somewhere  out  of  sight.  These 
other  gentlemen,  however,  I  think,  will  agree 
with  me  when  I  say  that  the  mere  fact  that  a 
canal-boat  can  be  moved  about  the  country, 
and  is  in  no  sense  a  fixture  anywhere,  shows 
that  as  a  dwelling-place  it  is  superior  to  a 
house.  Take  this  house,  for  instance.  This 
neighborhood  used  to  be  the  best  in  town. 
It  is  still  far  from  being  the  worst  neighbor 
hood  in  town,  but  it  is,  as  it  has  been  for 
several  years,  deteriorating.  The  establish 
ment  of  a  Turkish  bath  on  one  corner  and  a 


grocery-store  on  the  other  has  taken  away 
much  of  that  air  of  refinement  which  charac 
terized  it  when  the  block  was  devoted  to  res 
idential  purposes  entirely.  Now  just  suppose 
for  a  moment  that  this  street  were  a  canal, 
and  that  this  house  were  a  canal-boat.  The 
canal  could  run  down  as  much  as  it  pleased, 
the  neighborhood  could  deteriorate  eternally, 
but  it  could  not  affect  the  value  of  this  house 
as  the  home  of  refined  people  as  long  as  it  was 
possible  to  hitch  up  a  team  of  horses  to  the 
front  stoop  and  tow  it  into  a  better  locality. 
I'd  like  to  wager  every  man  at  this  table  that 
Mrs.  Pedagog  wouldn't  take  five  minutes  to 
make  up  her  mind  to  tow  this  house  up  to  a 
spot  near  Central  Park,  if  it  were  a  canal-boat 
and  the  streets  were  water  instead  of  a  mix 
ture  of  water,  sand,  and  Belgian  blocks." 

"No  takers,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  Tutt-tutt-tutt,"  ejaculated  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  You  seem  to  lose  sight  of  another  fact," 
said  the  Idiot,  warming  up  to  his  subject. 
"If  man  had  had  the  sense  in  the  beginning 
to  adopt  the  canal-boat  system  of  life,  and  we 
were  used  to  that  sort  of  thing,  it  would  not 
be  so  hard  upon  us  in  summer-time,  when  we 
have  to  live  in  hotels  in  order  that  we  and 
our  families  may  reap  the  benefits  of  a  period 


THE    NUISANCE  OP   HAVING    TO   PAY 


of  country  life.  We  could  simply  drive  off 
to  that  section  of  the  country  where  we  de 
sired  to  be.  Hotels  would  not  be  needed  if  a 
man  could  take  his  house  along  with  him  into 
the  fields,  and  one  phase  of  life  which  has 
more  bad  than  good  in  it  would  be  entirely 
obliterated.  There  is  nothing  more  disturb 
ing  to  the  serenity  of  a  domestic  man's  mind 
than  the  artificial  manner  of  living  that  pre 
vails  in  most  summer  hotels.  The  nuisance 
of  having  to  pay  bills  every  Monday  morning 
under  the  penalty  of  losing  one's  luggage 
would  be  obviated,  and  all  the  comforts  of 
home  would  be  directly  within  reach.  The 
trouble  incident  upon  getting  the  trunks 
packed  and  the  children  ready  for  a  long  day's 
journey  by  rail,  and  the  fatigue  arising  from 
such  a  journey,  would  be  reduced  to  a  mini 
mum.  The  troubles  attendant  upon  going 
into  a  far  country,  and  leaving  one's  house  in 
the  sole  charge  of  a  lot  'of  servants  for  a 
month  or  two  every  year,  would  be  done  away 
with  entirely;  and  if  at  any  time  it  became 
necessary  to  discharge  one  of  these  servants, 
she  could  be  put  off  the  boat  in  an  instant, 
and  then  the  boat  could  be  pushed  out  into 
the  middle  .of  the  canal,  so  that  the  dis 
charged  domestic  could  not  possibly  get 


aboard  again  and  take  her  revenge  by  smash 
ing  your  crockery  and  fixtures.  That  is  one 
of  the  worst  features  of  living  in  a  stationary 
house.  You  are  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  vin 
dictive  servants.  They  know  precisely  where 
you  live,  and  you  cannot  escape  them.  They 
can  come  back  when  there  is  no  man  around, 
and  raise  several  varieties  of  Ned  with  your 
wife  and  children.  With  a  movable  house, 
such  as  the  canal-boat  would  be,  you  could 
always  go  off  and  leave  your  family  in  per 
fect  safety." 

"  How  about  safety  in  a  storm  ?"  asked  the 
Bibliomaniac. 

"  Safety  in  a  storm  ?"  echoed  the  Idiot. 
"  That  seems  an  absurd  sort  of  a  question  to 
one  who  knows  any  thing  about  canal-boats.  I, 
for  one,  never  heard  of  a  canal-boat  being  se 
riously  damaged  in  a  storm  as  long  as  it  was 
anchored  in  the  canal  proper.  It  certainly 
isn't  any  more  dangerous  to  be  in  a  canal- 
boat  in  a  storm  than  it  is  to  be  in  a  house 
that  offers  resistance  to  the  winds,  and  is 
shaken  from  roof  to  cellar  at  every  blast. 
More  houses  have  been  blown  from  their 
foundations  than  canal-boats  sunk,  provided 
ordinary  care  has  been  taken  to  protect 
them." 


"And  you  think  the  canal-boat  would  be 
healthy?"  asked  the  Doctor.  "How  about 
dampness  and  all  that?" 

"That  is  a  professional  question,"  returned 
the  Idiot,  "which  I  think  you  could  answer 
better  than  I.  I  don't  see  why  a  canal-boat 
shouldn't  be  healthy,  however.  The  damp 
ness  would  not  amount  to  very  much.  It 
would  be  outside  of  one's  dwelling,  and  not 
within  it,  as  is  the  case  with  so  many  houses. 
A  canal-boat  having  no  cellar  could  not  have 
a  damp  one,  and  if  by  some  untoward  circum 
stance  it  should  spring  a  leak,  the  water  could 
be  pumped  out  at  once  and  the  leak  plugged 
up.  However  this  might  be,  I'll  offer  another 
wager  to  this  board  on  that  point,  and  that  is 
that  more  people  die  in  houses  than  on  canal- 
boats." 

"  We'd  rather  give  you  our  money  right 
out,"  retorted  the  Doctor. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  But  I  don't 
need  money.  I  don't  like  money.  Money  is 
responsible  for  more  extravagance  than  any 
other  commodity  in  existence.  Besides,  it 
and  I  are  not  intimate  enough  to  get  along 
very  well  together,  and  when  I  have  any  I 
immediately  do  my  level  best  to  rid  myself 
of  it.  But  to  return  to  our  canal-boat.  I 


note  a  look  of  disapproval  in  Mr.  White- 
choker's  eyes.  He  doesn't  seem  to  think  any 
more  of  my  scheme  than  do  the  rest  of  you — 
which  I  regret,  since  I  believe  that  he  would 
be  the  gainer  if  land  edifices  were  supplanted 
by  the  canal  system  as  proposed  by  myself. 
Take  church  on  a  rainy  morning,  for  in 
stance.  A  great  many  people  stay  at  home 
from  church  on  rainy  mornings  just  because 
they  do  not  want  to  venture  out  in  the  wet. 
Suppose  we  all  lived  in  canal-boats?  Would 
not  people  be  deprived  of  this  flimsy  pretext 
for  staying  at  home  if  their  homes  could  be 
towed  up  to  the  church  door?  Or,  better  yet, 
granting  that  the  churches  followed  out  the 
same  plan,  and  were  themselves  constructed 
like  canal-boats,  how  easy  it  would  be  for  the 
sexton  to  drive  the  church  around  the  town 
and  collect  the  absentees.  In  the  same  man 
ner  it  would  be  glorious  for  men  like  our 
selves,  who  have  to  go  to  their  daily  toil.  For 
a  consideration,  Mrs.  Pedagog  could  have  us 
driven  to  our  various  places  of  business  every 
morning,  returning  for  us  in  the  evening. 
Think  how  fine  it  would  be  for  me,  for  in 
stance,  instead  of  having  to  come  home  every 
night  in  an  overcrowded  elevated  train  or  on 
a  cable-car,  to  have  the  office-boy  come  and 


announce,  'Mrs.  Pedagog's  Select  Home  for 
Gentlemen  is  at  the  door,  Mr.  Idiot.'  I  could 
step  right  out  of  my  office  into  my  charming 
little  bedroom  up  in  the  bow,  and  the  time 
usually  expended  on  the  cars  could  be  de 
voted  to  dressing  for  tea.  Then  we  could 
stop  in  at  the  court-house  for  our  legal  friend; 
and  as  for  Doctor  Capsule,  wouldn't  he  revel 
in  driving  this  boarding-house  about  town  on 
his  daily  rounds  among  his  patients?" 

"  What  would  become  of  my  office  hours  ?" 
asked  the  Doctor.  "  If  this  house  were  whirl 
ing  giddily  all  about  the  city  from  morning 
until  night,  I  don't  know  what  would  become 
of  my  office  patients." 

"  They  might  die  a  little  sooner  or  live  a 
little  longer,  that  is  all,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  If 
they  weren't  able  to  find  the  house  at  all, 
however,  I  think  it  would  be  better  for  us,  for 
much  as  I  admire  you,  Doctor,  I  think  your 
office  hours  are  a  nuisance  to  the  rest  of  us. 
I  had  to  elbow  my  way  out  of  the  house  this 
morning  between  a  double  line  of  sufferers 
from  mumps  and  influenza,  and  other  pleas 
ingly  afflicted  patients  of  yours,  and  I  didn't 
like  it  very  much." 

"  I  don't  believe  they  liked  it  much  either," 
returned  the  Doctor.  "  One  man  with  a 


sprained  ankle  told  me  about  you.  You 
shoved  him  in  passing." 

"  Well,  you  can  apologize  to  him  in  my  be 
half,"  returned  the  Idiot;  "but  you  might 
add  that  he  must  expect  very  much  the  same 
treatment  whenever  he  and  a  boy  with  mumps 
stand  between  me  and  the  door.  Sprained 
ankles  aren't  contagious,  and  I  preferred  shov 
ing  him  to  the  other  alternative." 

The  Doctor  was  silent,  and  the  Idiot  rose  to 
go.  "  Where  will  the  house  be  this  evening 
about  six-thirty,  Mrs.  Pedagog?"  he  asked,  as 
he  pushed  his  chair  back  from  the  table. 

"  Where?  Why,  here,  of  course,"  returned 
the  landlady. 

"  Why,  yes — of  course,"  observed  the  Idiot, 
with  an  impatient  gesture.  "How  foolish 
of  me  !  I've  really  been  so  wrapped  up  in 
my  canal-boat  ideal  that  I  came  to  believe 
that  it  might  possibly  be  real  and  not  a 
dream,  after  all.  I  almost  believed  that  per 
haps  I  should  find  that  the  house  had  been 
towed  somewhere  up  into  Westchester  Coun 
ty  on  my  return,  so  that  we  might  all  escape 
the  city's  tax  on  personal  property,  which 
I  am  told  is  unusually  high  this  year." 

With  which  sally  the  Idiot  kissed  his  hand 
to  Mr.  Pedagog  and  retired  from  the  scene. 


IT 


"  LET'S  write  a  book,"  suggested  the  Idiot, 
as  he  took  his  place  at  the  board  and  unfolded 
his  napkin. 

"  What  about  ?"  asked  the  Doctor,  with  a 
smile  at  the  idea  of  the  Idiot's  thinking  of 
embarking  on  literary  pursuits. 

"  About  four  hundred  pages  long,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  I  feel  inspired." 

"  You  are  inspired,"  said  the  School-Master. 
"In  your  way  you  are  a  genius.  I  really 
never  heard  of  such  a  variegated  Idiot  as  you 
are  in  all  my  experience,  and  that  means  a 
great  deal,  I  can  tell  you,  for  in  the  course  of 
my  career  as  an  instructor  of  youth  I'  have 
encountered  many  idiots." 

"Were  they  idiots  before  or  after  having 
drank  at  the  fount  of  your  learning?"  asked 
the  Idiot,  placidly. 

Mr.  Pedagog  glared,  and  the  Idiot  was  ap 
parently  satisfied.  To  make  Mr.  Pedagog 


12 


glare  appeared  to  be  one  of  the  chiefest  of 
his  ambitions. 

"You  will  kindly  remember,  Mr.  Idiot," 
said  Mrs.  Pedagog  at  this  point,  "  that  Mr. 
Pedagog  is  my  husband,  and  such  insinua 
tions  at  my  table  are  distinctly  out  of  place." 

"I  ask  your  pardon,  Mrs.  Pedagog,"  re 
joined  the  offender,  meekly.  "  Nevertheless, 
as  apart  from  the  question  in  hand  as  to 
whether  Mr.  Pedagog  inspires  idiocy  or  not, 
I  should  like  to  get  the  views  of  this  gather 
ing  on  the  point  you  make  regarding  the 
table.  Is  this  your  table  ?  Is  it  not  rather 
the  table  of  those  who  sit  about  it  to  regale 
their  inner  man  with  the  good  things  under 
which  I  remember  once  or  twice  in  my  life  to 
have  heard  it  groan  ?  To  my  mind,  the  latter 
is  the  truth.  It  is  our  table,  because  we  buy 
it,  and  I  am  forced  to  believe  that  some  of  us 
pay  for  it.  I  am  prepared  to  admit  that  if 
Mr.  Brief,  for  instance,  is  delinquent  in  his 
weekly  payments,  his  interest  in  the  table  re 
verts  to  you  until  he  shall  have  liquidated, 
and  he  is  not  privileged  to  say  a  word  that  you 
do  not  approve  of ;  but  I,  for  instance,  who 
since  January  1st  have  been  compelled  to  pay 
in  advance,  am  at  least  sole  lessee,  and  for 
the  time  being  proprietor  of  the  portion  for 


13 


which  I  have  paid.  You  have  sold  it  to  me. 
I  have  entered  into  possession,  and  while  in 
possession,  as  a  matter  of  right  and  not  on 
sufferance,  haven't  I  the  privilege  of  freedom 
of  speech  ?" 

"You  certainly  exercise  the  privilege 
whether  you  have  it  or  not,"  snapped  Mr. 
Pedagog. 

"Well,  I  believe  in  exercise,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  Exercise  brings  strength,  and  if  ex 
ercising  the  privilege  is  going  to  strengthen 
it,  exercise  it  I  shall,  if  I  have  to  hire  a  gym 
nasium  for  the  purpose.  But  to  return  to 
Mrs.  Pedagog's  remark.  It  brings  up  another 
question  that  has  more  or  less  interested  me. 
Because  Mrs.  Smithers  married  Mr.  Pedagog, 
do  we  lose  all  of  our  rights  in  Mr.  Pedagog? 
Before  the  happy  event  that  reduced  our 
number  from  ten  to  nine — " 

"  We  are  still  ten,  are  we  not  ?"  asked  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  counting  the  guests. 

"  Not  if  Mr.  Pedagog  and  the  late  Mrs. 
Smithers  have  become  one,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"But,  as  I  was  saying,  before  the  happy 
event  that  reduced  our  number  from  ten  to 
nine  we  were  permitted  to  address  our  friend 
Pedagog  in  any  terms  we  saw  fit,  and  when 
ever  he  became  sufficiently  interested  to  in- 


dulge  in  repartee  we  were  privileged  to  re 
turn  it.  Have  we  relinquished  that  privilege  ? 
I  don't  remember  to  have  done  so." 

"  It's  a  question  worthy  of  your  giant  in 
tellect,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog,  scornfully.  "  For 
myself,  I  do  not  at  all  object  to  anything  you 
may  choose  to  say  to  me  or  of  me.  Your 
assaults  are  to  me  as  water  is  to  a  duck's 
back." 

"I  am  sorry,"  said  the  Idiot.  "I  hate 
family  disagreements,  and  here  we  have  Mrs. 
Pedagog  taking  one  side  and  Mr.  Ped 
agog  the  other.  But  whatever  decision 
may  ultimately  be  reached,  of  one  thing  Mrs. 
Pedagog  must  be  assured.  I  on  principle 
side  against  Mr.  Pedagog,  and  if  it  be  the 
wish  of  my  good  landlady  that  I  shall  refrain 
from  playing  intellectual  battledore  and  shut 
tlecock  with  her  husband,  whom  we  all  re 
vere,  I  certainly  shall  refrain.  Hereafter  if 
I  indulge  in  anything  that  in  any  sense  re 
sembles  repartee  with  our  landlord,  I  wish  it 
distinctly  understood  that  an  apology  goes 
with  it." 

"  That's  all  right,  my  boy,"  said  the  School- 
Master.  "  You  mean  well.  You  are  a  little 
new,  that's  all,  and  we  all  understand  you." 

"  I   don't  understand  him,"    growled   the 


16 


Doctor,  still  smarting  under  the  recollection 
of  former  breakfast-table  discomfitures.  "  I 
wish  we  could  get  him  translated." 

"  If  you  prescribed  for  me  once  or  twice  I 
think  it  likely  I  should  be  translated  in 
short  order,"  retorted  the  Idiot.  ".I  wonder 
how  I'd  go  translated  into  French  ?" 

"  You  couldn't  be  expressed  in  French," 
put  in  the  Lawyer.  *'  It  would  take  some 
barbarian  tongue  to  do  you  justice." 

"Very  well,"  said  the  Idiot.  "Proceed. 
Do  me  justice." 

"  I  can't  begin  to,"  said  Mr.  Brief,  angrily. 

"  That's  what  I  thought,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  That's  the  reason  why  you  always  do  me 
such  great  injustice.  You  lawyers  always 
have  to  be  doing  something,  even  if  it  is  only 
holding  down  a  chair  so  that  it  won't  blow 
out  of  your  office  window.  If  you  haven't 
any  justice  to  mete  out,  you  take  another 
tack  and  dispense  injustice  with  lavish  hand. 
However,  I'll  forgive  you  if  you'll  tell  me 
one  thing.  What's  libel,  Mr.  Brief  ?" 

"  None  of  your  business,"  growled  the 
Lawyer. 

*'  A  very  good  general  definition,"  said  the 
Idiot,  approvingly.  "  If  there's  any  business 
in  the  world  that  I  should  hate  to  have 


16 


known  as  mine  it  is  that  of  libel.  I  think, 
however,  your  definition  is  not  definite. 
What  I  wanted  to  know  was  just  how  far  I 
could  go  with  remarks  at  this  table  and  be 
safe  from  prosecution." 

"Nobody  would  ever  prosecute  you,  for  two 
reasons,"  said  the  lawyer.  "In  a  civil  action 
for  money  damages  a  verdict  against  you  for 
ten  cents  wouldn't  be  worth  a  rap,  because 
the  chances  are  you  couldn't  pay.  In  a  crim 
inal  action  your  conviction  would  be  a  bad 
thing,  because  you  would  be  likely  to  prove  a 
corrupting  influence  in  any  jail  in  creation. 
Besides,  you'd  be  safe  before  a  jury,  anyhow. 
You  are  just  the  sort  of  idiot  that  the  intel 
ligent  jurors  of  to-day  admire,  and  they'd 
acquit  you  of  any  crime.  A  man  has  a  right 
to  a  trial  at  the  hands  of  a  jury  of  his  peers. 
I  don't  think  even  in  a  jury-box  twelve 
idiots  equal  to  yourself  could  be  found,  so 
don't  worry." 

"Thanks.  Have  a  cigarette?"  said  the 
Idiot,  tossing  one  over  to  the  Lawyer.  "  It's 
all  I  have.  If  I  had  a  half-dollar  I  should  pay 
you  for  your  opinion  ;  but  since  I  haven't,  I 
offer  you  my  all.  The  temperature  of  my 
coffee  seems  to  have  fallen,  Mrs.  Pedagog. 
Will  you  kindly  let  me  have  another  cup  ?" 


r, 


"Certainly,  said  Mrs.  Pedagog.  "Mary, 
get  the  Idiot  another  cup." 

Mary  did  as  she  was  told,  placing  the  empty 
bit  of  china  at  Mrs.  Pedagog's  side. 

"It  is  for  the  Idiot,  Mary,"  said  Mrs.  Ped 
agog,  coldly.  "  Take  it  to  him." 

"  Empty,  ma'am  ?"  asked  the  maid. 

"  Certainly,  Mary,"  said  the  Idiot,  perceiv 
ing  Mrs.  Pedagog's  point.  "  I  asked  for  an 
other  cup,  not  for  more  coffee." 

Mrs.  Pedagog  smiled  quietly  at  her  own 
joke.  At  hair-splitting  she  could  give  the 
Idiot  points. 

"I  am  surprised  that  Mary  should  have 
thought  I  wanted  more  coffee,"  continued  the 
Idiot,  in  an  aggrieved  tone.  "  It  shows  that 
she  too  thinks  me  out  of  my  mind." 

"  You  are  not  out  of  your  mind,"  said  the 
Bibliomaniac.  "  It  would  be  a  good  thing  if 
you  were.  In  replenishing  your  mental  sup 
ply  you  might  have  the  luck  to  get  better 
quality." 

"  I  probably  should  have  the  luck,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  I  have  had  a  great  store  of  it  in  my 
life.  From  the  very  start  I  have  had  luck. 
When  I  think  that  I  was  born  myself,  and 
not  you,  I  feel  as  if  I  had  had  more  than  my 
share  of  good-fortune — more  luck  than  the 


is 


law  allows.  How  much  luck  does  the  law 
allow,  Mr.  Brief?" 

"  Bosh  !"  said  Mr.  Brief,  with  a  scornful 
wave  of  his  hand,  as  if  he  were  ridding  him 
self  of  a  troublesome  gnat.  "Don't  bother 
me  with  such  mind-withering  questions." 

"  All  right,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I'll  ask  you 
an  easier  one.  Why  does  not  the  world  rec 
ognize  matrimony  ?" 

Mr.  Whitechoker  started.  Here,  indeed, 
was  a  novel  proposition. 

"  I — I — must  confess,"  said  he,  "  that  of 
all  the  idiotic  questions  I — er — I  have  ever 
had  the  honor  of  hearing  asked  that  takes 
the—" 

"  Cake  ?"  suggested  the  Idiot. 

"  — palm  !"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker,  severely. 

"  Well,  perhaps  so,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  But 
matrimony  is  the  science,  or  the  art,  or  what 
ever  you  call  it,  of  making  two  people  one, 
is  it  not  ?" 

"It  certainly  is,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 
"  But  what  of  it  ?" 

"  The  world  does  not  recognize  the  unity," 
said  the  Idiot.  "  Take  our  good  proprietors, 
for  instance.  They  were  made  one  by  your 
self,  Mr.  Whitechoker.  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
being  an  usher  at  the  ceremony,  yielding  the 


DEMANDS   TICKETS   FOR   TWO 


L9 


position  of  best  man  gracefully,  as  is  my 
wont,  to  the  Bibliomaniac.  He  was  best 
man,  but  not  the  better  man,  by  a  simple 
process  of  reasoning.  Now  no  one  at  this 
board  disputes  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pedagog  are 
one,  but  how  about  the  world  ?  Mr.  Peda 
gog  takes  Mrs.  Pedagog  to  a  concert.  Are 
they  one  there  ?" 

"  Why  not  ?"  asked  Mr.  Brief. 

"  That's  what  I  want  to  know — why  not  ? 
The  world,  as  represented  by  the  ticket-taker 
at  the  door,  says  they  are  not — or  implies 
that  they  are  not,  by  demanding  tickets  for 
two.  They  attempt  to  travel  out  to  Niagara 
Falls.  The  railroad  people  charge  them  two 
fares  ;  the  hackman  charges  them  two  fares  ; 
the  hotel  bills  are  made  out  for  two  people. 
It  is  the  same  wherever  they  go  in  the 
world,  and  I  regret  to  say  that  even  in  our 
own  home  there  is  a  disposition  to  regard 
them  as  two.  When  I  spoke  of  there  being 
nine  persons  here  instead  of  ten,  Mr.  White- 
choker  himself  disputed  my  point — and  yet  it 
was  not  so  much  his  fault  as  the  fault  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Pedagog  themselves.  Mrs.  Pedagog 
seems  to  cast  doubt  upon  the  unity  by  provid 
ing  two  separate  chairs  for  the  two  halves 
that  make  up  the  charming  entirety.  Two 


cups  are  provided  for  their  coffee.  Two 
forks,  two  knives,  two  spoons,  two  portions 
of  all  the  delicacies  of  the  season  which  are 
lavished  upon  us  out  of  season — generally 
after  it — fall  to  their  lot.  They  do  not  ob 
ject  to  being  called  a  happy  couple,  when 
they  should  be  known  as  a  happy  single. 
Now  what  I  want  to  know  is  why  the  world 
does  not  accept  the  shrinkage  which  has  been 
pronounced  valid  by  the  church  and  is  recog 
nized  by  the  individual  ?  Can  any  one  here 
tell  me  that  ?" 

No  one  could,  apparently.  At  least  no  one 
endeavored  to.  The  Idiot  looked  inquiring 
ly  at  all,  and  then,  receiving  no  reply  to  his 
question,  he  rose  from  the  table. 

"  I  think,"  he  said,  as  he  started  to  leave 
the  room — "  I  think  we  ought  to  write  that 
book.  If  we  made  it  up  of  the  things  you 
people  don't  know,  it  would  be  one  of  the 
greatest  books  of  the  century.  At  any  rate, 
it  would  be  great  enough  in  bulk  to  fill  the 
biggest  library  in  America." 


Ill 


"I  WISH  I  were  beginning  life  all  over 
again,"  said  the  Idiot  one  spring  morning, 
as  he  took  his  accustomed  place  at  Mrs. 
Pedagog's  table. 

"  I  wish  you  were,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog  from 
behind  his  newspaper.  "Then  your  parents 
would  have  you  shut  up  in  a  nursery,  and  it 
is  even  conceivable  that  you  would  be  re 
ceiving  those  disciplinary  attentions  with  a 
slipper  that  you  seem  to  me  so  frequently  to 
deserve,  were  you  at  this  present  moment  in 
the  nursery  stage  of  your  development." 

"My!"  ejaculated  the  Idiot.  "What  a 
wonder  you  are,  Mr.  Pedagog  !  It  is  a  good 
thing  you  are  not  a  justice  in  a  criminal 
court." 

"  And  what,  may  I  venture  to  ask,"  said 
Mr.  Pedagog,  glancing  at  the  Idiot  over  his 
spectacles — "  what  has  given  rise  to  that  ex 
traordinary  remark,  the  connection  of  which 


22 


with  anything  that  has  been  said  or  done 
this  morning  is  distinctly  not  apparent  ?" 

"I  only  meant  that  a  man  who  was  so 
given  over  to  long  sentences  as  you  are 
would  probably  make  too  severe  a  judge  in 
a  criminal  court,"  replied  the  Idiot,  meekly. 
"  Do  you  make  use  of  the  same  phraseology 
in  the  class-room  that  you  dazzle  us  with,  I 
should  like  to  know  ?" 

"And  why  not,  pray  ?"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  No  special  reason,"  said  the  Idiot ;  "  only 
it  does  seem  to  me  that  an  instructor  of 
youth  ought  to  be  more  careful  in  his  choice 
of  adverbs  than  you  appear  to  be.  Of  course 
Doctor  Bolus  here  is  under  no  obligation  to 
speak  more  grammatically  or  correctly  than 
he  does.  People  call  him  in  to  prescribe,  not 
to  indulge  in  rhetorical  periods,  and  he  can 
write  his  prescriptions  in  a  sort  of  intuitive 
Latin  and  nobody  be  the  wiser,  but  you,  who 
are  said  to  be  sowing  the  seeds  of  knowledge 
in  the  brain  of  youth,  should  be  more  careful." 

"  Hear  the  grammarian  talk  !"  returned  Mr. 
Pedagog.  "Listen  to  this  embryonic  Sam 
uel  Johnson  the  Second.  What  have  I  said 
that  so  offends  the  linguistic  taste  of  Lindley 
Murray,  Jun.  ?" 

"  Nothing,"  returned  the  Idiot.     "  I   can- 


not  say  that  you  have  said  anything.  I  never 
heard  you  say  anything  in  my  life  ;  but  while 
you  can  no  doubt  find  good  authority  for 
making  use  of  the  words  'distinctly  not  ap 
parent,'  you  ought  not  to  throw  such  phrases 
around  carelessly.  The  thing  which  is  dis 
tinct  is  apparent,  therefore  to  say  'distinctly 
not  apparent '  to  a  mind  that  is  not  given  to 
analysis  sounds  strange.  You  might  as  well 
say  of  a  beautiful  girl  that  she  is  plainly 
pretty,  meaning  of  course  that  she  is  evident 
ly  pretty  ;  but  those  who  are  unacquainted 
with  the  idiomatic  peculiarities  of  your  speech 
might  ask  you  if  you  meant  that  she  was 
pretty  in  a  plain  sort  of  way.  Suppose,  too, 
you  were  writing  a  novel,  and,  in  a  desire  to 
give  your  reader  a  fair  idea  of  the  personal 
appearance  of  a  homely  but  good  creature, 
you  should  say,  'It  cannot  be  denied  that 
Rosamond  Follansbee  was  pretty  plain  ?'  It 
wouldn't  take  a  very  grave  error  of  the  types 
to  change  your  entire  meaning.  To  save  a 
line  on  a  page,  for  instance,  it  might  become 
necessary  to  eliminate  a  single  word  ;  and  if 
that  word  should  chance  to  be  the  word 
'  plain '  in  the  sentence  I  have  given,  your 
homely  but  good  person  would  be  set  down 
as  being  undeniably  pretty.  Which  shows, 


2-1 


it  seems  to  me,  that  too  great  care  cannot  be 
exercised  in  the  making  of  selections  from 
our  vocabu — 

"  You  are  the  worst  I  ever  knew  !"  snapped 
Mr.  Pedagog. 

"Which  only  proves,"  observed  the  Idiot, 
"  that  you  have  not  heeded  the  Scriptural 
injunction  that  you  should  know  thyself. 
Are  those  buckwheat  cakes  or  doilies  ?" 

Whether  the  question  was  heard  or  not  is 
not  known.  It  certainly  was  not  answered, 
and  silence  reigned  for  a  few  minutes.  Fi 
nally  Mrs.  Pedagog  spoke,  and  in  the  man 
ner  of  one  who  was  somewhat  embarrassed. 
"  I  am  in  an  embarrassing  position,"  said 
she. 

"  Good  !"  said  the  Idiot,  sotto-voce,  to  the 
genial  gentleman  who  occasionally  imbibed. 
"  There  is  hope  for  the  landlady  yet.  If  she 
can  be  embarrassed  she  is  still  human — a  con 
dition  I  was  beginning  to  think  she  wotted 
not  of." 

"  She  whatted  what  ?"  queried  the  genial 
gentleman,  not  quite  catching  the  Idiot's 
words. 

"  Never  mind,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  Let's 
hear  how  she  ever  came  to  be  embarrassed," 

"I  have  had  an  application  for  my  first- 


floor  suite,  and  I  don't  know  whether  I  ought 
to  accept  it  or  not,"  said  the  landlady. 

"She  has  a  conscience,  too,"  whispered 
the  Idiot. ;  and  then  he  added,  aloud,  "  And 
wherein  lies  the  difficulty,  Mrs.  Pedagog?" 

"  The  applicant  is  an  actor  ;  Junius  Brutus 
Davenport  is  his  name." 

"  A  tragedian  or  a  comedian  ?"  asked  the 
Bibliomaniac. 

"Or  first  walking  gentleman,  who  knows 
every  railroad  tie  in  the  country  ?"  put  in  the 
Idiot. 

"That  I  do  not  know,"  returned  the  land 
lady.  "  His  name  sounds  familiar  enough, 
though.  I  thought  perhaps  some  of  you 
gentlemen  might  know  of  him." 

"  I  have  heard  of  Junius  Brutus,"  observed 
the  Doctor,  chuckling  slightly  at  his  own 
humor,  "and  I've  heard  of  Davenport,  but 
Junius  Brutus  Davenport  is  a  combination 
with  which  I  am  not  familiar." 

"  Well,  I  can't  see  why  it  should  make  any 
difference  whether  the  man  is  a  tragedian,  or 
a  comedian,  or  a  familiar  figure  to  railroad 
men,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker,  firmly.  "  In  any 
event,  he  would  be  an  extremely  objec — 

"  It  makes  a  great  deal  of  difference,"  said 
the  Idiot.  "  I've  met  tragedians,  and  I've  met 


comedians,  and  I've  met  New  York  Central 
stars,  and  I  can  assure  you  they  each  repre 
sent  a  distinct  type.  The  tragedians,  as  a 
rule,  are  quiet  meek  individuals,  with  soft 
low  voices,  in  private  life.  They  are  more 
timid  than  otherwise,  though  essentially  amia 
ble.  I  knew  a  tragedian  once  who,  after  kill 
ing  seventeen  Indians,  a  road  -  agent,  and  a 
gross  of  cowboys  between  eight  and  ten  p.  M. 
every  night  for  sixteen  weeks,  working  six 
nights  a  week,  was  afraid  of  a  mild  little 
soft-shell  crab  that  lay  defenceless  on  a  plate 
before  him  on  the  evening  of  the  seventh 
night  of  the  last  week.  Tragedians  make 
agreeable  companions,  I  can  tell  you  ;  and  if 
J.  Brutus  Davenport  is  a  tragedian,  I  think 
Mrs.  Pedagog  would  do  well  to  let  him  have 
the  suite,  provided,  of  course,  that  he  pays 
for  it  in  advance." 

"  I  was  about  to  observe,  when  our  friend 
interrupted  me,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker,  with 
dignity,  "  that  in  any  event  an  actor  at  this 
board  would  be  to  me  an  extremely  objec — 

"Now  the  comedians,"  resumed  the  Idiot, 
ignoring  Mr.  Whitechoker's  remark — "the  co 
medians  are  very  different.  They  are  twice  as 
bloodthirsty  as  the  murderers  of  the  drama, 
and,  worse  than  that,  they  are  given  to  re- 


•THEY    ARE    GIVEN    TO    REIIKARSINO   AT    ALL    HOURS " 


37 


hearsing  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night. 
A  tragedian  is  a  hard  character  only  on  the 
stage,  but  the  comedian  is  the  comedian  al 
ways.  If  we  had  one  of  those  fellows  in  our 
midst,  it  would  not  be  very  long  before  we 
became  part  of  the  drama  ourselves.  Mrs. 
Pedagog  would  find  herself  embarrassed  once 
an  hour,  instead  of,  as  at  present,  once  a  cen 
tury.  Mr.  Whitechoker  would  hear  of  him 
self  as  having  appeared  by  proxy  in  a  roaring 
farce  before  our  comedian  had  been  with 
us  two  months.  The  wise  sayings  of  our 
friend  the  School-Master  would  be  spoken 
nightly  from  the  stage,  to  the  immense  de 
light  of  the  gallery  gods,  and  to  the  edifica 
tion  of  the  orchestra  circle,  who  would  won 
der  how  so  much  information  could  have  got 
into  the  world  and  they  not  know  it  before. 
The  out-of-town  papers  would  literally  teem 
with  witty  extracts  from  our  comedian's  plays, 
which  we  should  immediately  recognize  as 
the  dicta  of  my  poor  self." 

"All  of  which,"  put  in  Mr.  Whitechoker, 
"  but  proves  the  truth  of  my  assertion  that 
such  a  person  would  be  an  extremely  objec — " 

"  Then,  as  I  said  before,"  continued  the 
Idiot,  "  he  is  continually  rehearsing,  and  his 
objectionableness  as  a  fellow-boarder  would 


be  greater  or  less,  according  to  his  play.  If 
he  were  impersonating  a  shiftless  wanderer, 
who  shows  remarkable  bravery  at  a  hotel  fire, 
we  should  have  to  be  prepared  at  any  time 
to  hear  the  fire-engines  rushing  up  to  the 
front  door,  and  to  see  our  comedian  scaling 
the  fire-escape  with  Mrs.  Pedagog  and  her 
account-books  in  his  arms,  simply  in  the  line 
of  rehearsal.  If  he  were  impersonating  a  de 
tective  after  a  criminal  masquerading  as  a 
good  citizen,  the  School -Master  would  be 
startled  some  night  by  a  hoarse  voice  at  his 
key-hole  exclaiming  :  (  Ha  !  ha  !  I  have  him 
now.  There  is  no  escape  save  by  the  back 
window,  and  that's  so  covered  o'er  with  dust 
'twere  suffocation  sure  to  try  it.'  I  hesitate 
to  say  what  would  happen  if  he  were  a  tank 
comedian." 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker,  with  a 
trifle  more  impatience  than  was  compatible 
with  his  calling — "  perhaps  you  will  hesitate 
long  enough  for  me  to  state  what  I  have 
been  trying  to  state  ever  since  this  soliloquy 
of  yours  began — that  in  any  event,  whether 
this  person  be  a  tragedian,  or  a  comedian,  or 
a  walking  gentleman,  or  a  riding  gentleman 
in  a  circus,  I  object  to  his  being  admitted  to 
this  circle,  and  I  deem  it  well  to  say  right 


"  '  HA  !    HA  !      I   HAVE    HIM    NOW  !'  ' 


here  that  as  he  comes  in  at  the  front  door  I 
go  out  at  the  back.  As  a  clergyman,  I  do 
not  approve  of  the  stage." 

"  That  ought  to  settle  it,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  Mr.  Whicechoker  is  too  good  a  friend  to 
us  all  here  for  us  to  compel  him  to  go  out 
of  that  back  door  into  the  rather  limited 
market- garden  Mrs.  Pedagog  keeps  in  the 
yard.  My  indirect  plea  for  the  admission 
of  Mr.  Junius  Brutus  Davenport  was  based 
entirely  upon  my  desire  to  see  this  circle 
completed  or  nearer  completion  than  it  is 
at  present.  We  have  all  the  professions 
represented  here  but  the  stage,  and  why  ex 
clude  it,  granting  that  no  one  objects  ?  The 
men  whose  lives  are  given  over  to  the  amuse 
ment  of  mankind,  and  who  are  willing  to 
place  themselves  in  the  most  outrageous  sit 
uations  night  after  night  in  order  that  we 
may  for  the  time  being  seem  to  be  lifted  out 
of  the  unpleasant  situations  into  which  we 
have  got  ourselves,  are  in  my  opinion  doing 
a  noble  work.  The  theatre  enables  us  to  woo 
forgetfulness  of  self  successfully  for  a  few 
brief  hours,  and  I  have  seen  the  time  when 
an  hour  or  two  of  relief  from  actual  cares 
has  resulted  in  great  good.  Nevertheless, 
the  gentleman  is  not  elected  ;  and  if  Mrs. 


so 


Fedagog  will  kindly  refill  my  cup,  I  will  ask 
you  to  join  me  in  draining  a  toast  to  the 
health  of  the  pastor  of  this  flock,  whose  con 
science,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  is  the 
most  frequently  worn  and  yet  the  least  thread 
bare  of  the  consciences  represented  at  this 
table." 

This  easy  settlement  of  her  difficulty  was 
so  pleasing  to  Mrs.  Pedagog  that  the  Idiot's 
request  was  graciously  acceded  to,  and  Mr. 
Whitechoker's  health  was  drank  in  coffee, 
after  which  the  Idiot  requested  the  genial 
gentleman  who  occasionally  imbibed  to  join 
him  privately  in  eating  buckwheat  cakes  to 
the  health  of  Mr.  Davenport. 

"  I  haven't  any  doubt  that  he  is  worthy  of 
the  attention,"  he  said;  "and  if  you  will  lend 
me  the  money  to  buy  the  tickets,  I'll  take  you 
around  to  the  Criterion  to-night,  where  he  is 
playing.  I  don't  know  whether  he  plays 
Hamlet  or  A  Hole  in  the  Roof;  but,  at  any 
rate,  we  can  have  a  good  time  between  the 
acts." 


IV 


"  I  SEE  the  men  are  at  work  on  the  pave 
ments  this  morning,"  said  the  School-Master, 
gazing  out  through  the  window  at  a  number 
of  laborers  at  work  in  the  street. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Idiot,  calmly,  "  and  I  think 
Mrs.  Pedagog  ought  to  sue  the  Department 
of  Public  Works  for  libel.  If  she  hasn't  a 
case  no  maligned  person  ever  had." 

"  What  are  you  saying,  sir  ?"  queried  the 
landlady,  innocently. 

"I  say,"  returned  the  Idiot,  pointing  out 
into  the  street,  "that  you  ought  to  sue  the  De 
partment  of  Public  Works  for  libel.  They've 
got  their  sign  right  up  against  your  house. 
No  Thorough  Fare  is  what  it  says.  That's 
libel,  isn't  it,  Mr.  Brief  ?" 

"  It  is  certainly  a  fatal  criticism  of  a  board 
ing-house,"  observed  Mr.  Brief,  with  a  twinkle 
in  his  eye,  "but  Mrs.  Pedagog  could  hardly 
secure  damages  on  that  score." 


32 


"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  returned  the 
Idiot.  "  As  I  understand  it,  it  is  an  old  max 
im  of  the  law  that  the  greater  the  truth  the 
greater  the  libel.  Mrs.  Pedagog  ought  to  re 
ceive  a  million —  By-the-way,  what  have  we 
this  morning  ?" 

"  We  have  steak  and  fried  potatoes,  sir," 
replied  Mrs.  Pedagog,  frigidly.  "  And  I  de 
sire  to  add,  that  one  who  criticises  the  table  as 
much  as  you  do  would  do  well  to  get  his 
meals  outside." 

"  That,  Mrs.  Pedagog,  is  not  the  point. 
The  difficulty  I  find  here  lies  in  getting  my 
meals  inside,"  said  the  Idiot. 

"Mary,  you  may  bring  in  the  mush,"  ob 
served  Mrs.  Pedagog,  pursing  her  lips,  as  she 
always  did  when  she  wished  to  show  that  she 
was  offended. 

"Yes,  Mary,"  put  in  the  School  -  Master ; 
"  let  us  have  the  mush  as  quickly  as  possible 
— and  may  it  not  be  quite  such  mushy  mush 
as  the  remarks  we  have  just  been  favored 
with  by  our  talented  friend  the  Idiot." 

"You  overwhelm  me  with  your  compli 
ments,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  replied  the  Idiot,  cheer 
fully.  "  A  flatterer  like  you  should  live  in  a 
flat." 

"  Has  your  friend  completed  his  article  on 


old  jokes  yet?"  queried  the  Bibliomaniac, 
with  a  smile  and  some  apparent  irrelevance. 

"Yes  and  no,"  said  the  Idiot.  "He  has 
completed  his  labors  on  it  by  giving  it  up. 
He  is  a  very  thorough  sort  of  a  fellow,  and 
he  intended  to  make  the  article  comprehen 
sive,  but  he  found  he  couldn't,  because,  judg 
ing  from  comments  of  men  like  you,  for  in 
stance,  he  was  forced  to  conclude  that  there 
never  was  a  new  joke.  But,  as  I  was  saying 
the  other  morning — " 

"  Do  you  really  remember  what  you  say  ?" 
sneered  Mr.  Pedagog.  "  You  must  have  a 
great  memory  for  trifles." 

"Sir,  I  shall  never  forget  you,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  But  to  revert  to  what  I  was  saying 
the  other  morning,  I'd  like  to  begin  life  all 
over  again,  so  that  I  could  prepare  myself 
for  the  profession  of  architecture.  It's  the 
greatest  profession  in  the  world,  and  one 
which  is  surest  to  bring  immortality  to  its 
successful  follower.  A  man  may  write  a 
splendid  book,  and  become  a  great  man  for  a 
while  and  within  certain  limits,  but  the  chances 
are  that  some  other  man  will  come  along 
later  and  supplant  him.  Then  the  book's  sale 
will  die  out  after  a  time,  and4with  this  will 
come  a  diminution  of  its  author's  reputa- 


tion,  in  extent  anyway.  An  actor  or  a  great 
preacher  becomes  only  a  name  after  his  death, 
but  the  architect  who  builds  a  cathedral  or 
a  fine  public  building  really  erects  a  monu 
ment  to  his  own  memory." 

"  He  does  if  he  can  build  it  so  that  it  will 
stay  up,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac.  "I  think 
you,  however,  are  better  off  as  you  are.  If 
you  had  a  more  extended  reputation  or  a  last 
ing  name  you  would  probably  be  locked  up 
in  some  retreat ;  or  if  you  were  not,  posterity 
would  want  to  know  why." 

"  I  am  locked  up  in  a  retreat  of  Nature's 
making,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  a  sigh.  "  Nat 
ure  has  set  around  me  certain  limitations 
which,  while  they  are  not  material,  might  as 
well  be  so  as  far  as  my  ability  to  soar  above 
them  is  concerned — and  it's  well  she  has.  If 
it  were  otherwise,  my  life  would  not  be  safe 
or  bearable  in  this  company.  As  it  is,  I  am 
happy  and  not  at  all  afraid  of  the  effects 
your  jealousy  of  me  might  entail  if  I  were 
any  better  than  the  rest  of  you." 

"  I  like  that,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"I  thought  you  would,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  That's  why  I  said  it.  I  aim  to  please,  and 
for  once  seem  tp  have  hit  the  bull's-eye.  Mary, 
kindly  break  open  this  biscuit  for  me." 


"Have  you  ideas  on  the  subject  of  archi 
tecture  that  you  so  desire  to  become  an  arch 
itect?"  queried  Mr.  Whitechoker,  who  was 
Always  full  of  sympathy  for  aspiring  nat 
ures. 

"A  few,"  said  the  Idiot. 

Mr.  Pedagog  laughed  outright. 

"  Let's  test  his  ideas,"  he  said,  in  an  amused 
way.  "Take  a  cathedral,  for  instance.  Sup 
pose,  Mr.  Idiot,  a  man  should  come  to  you 
and  say :  <  Idiot,  we  have  a  fund  of  $800,000 
in  our  hands,  actual  cash.  We  think  of  build 
ing  a  cathedral,  and  we  think  of  employing 
you  to  draw  up  our  plans.  Give  us  some  idea 
of  what  we  should  do.'  Do  you  mean  to  tell 
me  that  you  could  say  anything  reasonable 
or  intelligent  to  that  man  ?" 

"Well,  that  depends  upon  what  you  call 
reasonable  and  intelligent.  I  have  never  been 
able  to  find  out  what  you  mean  by  those 
terms,"  the  Idiot  answered,  slowly.  "  But  I 
could  tell  him  something  that  I  consider  rea 
sonable  and  intelligent." 

"From  your  own  point  of  view,  then,  as  to 
reasonableness  and  intelligence,  what  should 
you  say  to  him  ?" 

"  I'd  make  him  out  a  plan  providing  for 
the  investment  of  his  $800,000  in  five-per- 


36 


cent,  gold  bonds,  which  would  bring  him  in 
an  income  of  $40,000  a  year  ;  after  which 
I  should  call  his  attention  to  the  fact  that 
$40,000  a  year  would  enable  him  to  take  10,-' 

000  poor  children  out  of  this  sweltering  city 
into  the   country,  to  romp   and  drink  fresh 
milk  and  eat  wholesome  food  for  two  weeks 
ever}7  summer  from  now  until  the  end  of  time, 
which  would  build  up  a  human  structure  that 
might  be  of  more  benefit  to  the  world  than 
any  pile  of  bricks,  marble,  and  wrought -iron 

1  or  any  other  architect  could  conceive  of," 
said  the  Idiot.     "  The  structure  would  stand 
up,  too." 

"  You  call  that  architecture,  do  you  ?"  said 
Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Idiot,  "  of  the  renaissance 
order.  But  that,  of  course,  you  term  idi 
ocy  —  and  maybe  it  is.  I  like  to  be  that 
kind  of  an  idiot.  I  do  not  claim  to  be  able 
to  build  a  cathedral,  however.  I  don't  sup 
pose  I  could  even  build  a  boarding-house  like 
this,  but  what  I  should  like  to  do  in  archi 
tecture  would  be  to  put  up  a  $5000  dwelling- 
house  for  $5000.  That's  a  thing  that  has 
never  been  done,  and  I  think  I  might  be  able 
to  do  it.  If  I  did,  I'd  patent  the  plan  and 
make  a  fortune.  Then  I  should  like  to  know 


enough  about  the  science  of  planning  a  build 
ing  to  find  out  whether  ray  model  hotel  is 
practicable  or  not." 

"  You  have  a  model  hotel  in  your  mind, 
eh  ?"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  It  must  be  a  very  small  hotel  if  it's  in  his 
mind,"  said  the  Doctor. 

"That's  tantamount  to  saying  that  it  isn't 
anywhere,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"Well,  it's  a  great  hotel  just  the  same," 
said  the  Idiot.  "Although  I  presume  it  would 
be  expensive  to  build.  It  would  have  mov 
able  rooms,  in  the  first  place.  Each  room 
would  be  constructed  like  an  elevator,  with 
appliances  at  hand  for  moving  it  up  and 
down.  The  great  thing  about  this  would  be 
that  persons  could  have  a  room  on  any  floor 
they  wanted  it,  so  long  as  they  got  the  room 
in  the  beginning.  A  second  advantage  would 
lie  in  the  fact,  that  if  you  were  sleeping  in  a 
room  next  door  to  another  in  which  there  was 
a  crying  baby,  you  could  pull  the  rope  and 
go  up  two  or  three  flights  until  you  were  free 
from  the  noise.  Then  in  case  of  fire  the  room 
in  which  the  fire  started  could  be  lowered 
into  a  sliding  tank  large  enough  to  immerse 
the  whole  thing  in,  which  I  should  have  con 
structed  in  the  cellar.  If  the  whole  building 


were  to  catch  fire,  there  would  be  no  loss  of 
life,  because  all  the  rooms  could  be  lowered 
to  the  ground-floor,  and  the  occupants  could 
step  right  out  upon  solid  ground.  Then 
again,  if  you  were  down  on  the  ground-floor, 
and  desired  to  get  an  extended  view  of  the 
surrounding  country,  it  would  be  easy  to 
raise  your  room  to  the  desired  elevation. 
Why,  there's  no  end  to  the  advantages  to  be 
gained  from  such  an  arrangement." 

"It's  a  fine  idea,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog,  "and 
one  worthy  of  your  mammoth  intellect.  It 
couldn't  possibly  cost  more  than  a  million  of 
dollars  to  erect  such  a  hotel,  could  it?" 

"  No,"  said  the  Idiot.  "And  that  is  cheap 
alongside  some  of  the  hotels  they  are  putting 
up  nowadays." 

"  It  could  be  built  on  less  than  four  hun 
dred  acres  of  ground,  too,  I  presume?"  said 
the  Bibliomaniac,  with  a  wink  at  the  Doctor. 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  Idiot,  meekly. 

"  And  if  anybody  fell  sick  in  one  of  the 
rooms,"  said  the  Doctor,  "  and  needed  a 
change  of  air,  you  could  have  a  tower  over 
each,  I  suppose,  so  that  the  room  could  be  el 
evated  high  enough  to  secure  the  different 
quality  in  the  ether  ?" 

"Undoubtedly,"  said  the  Idiot.   "Although 


TREY    DEPARTED 


39 


that  would  add  materially  to  the  expense.  A 
scarlet-fever  patient,  however,  in  a  hotel  like 
that  could  very  easily  be  isolated  from  the 
rest  of  the  house  by  the  maintenance  of  what 
might  be  called  the  hospital  floor." 

"  Superb  !"  said  the  Doctor.  "  I  wonder 
you  haven't  spoken  to  some  architectural 
friend  about  it." 

"  I  have,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  You  must  re 
member  that  young  fellow  with  a  black  mus 
tache  I  had  here  to  dinner  last  Saturday 
night." 

"  Yes,  I  remember  him,"  said  the  Doctor. 
"  Is  he  an  architect  ?" 

"He  is — and  a  good  one.  He  can  take  a 
brown-stone  dwelling  and  turn  it  into  a 
colonial  mansion  with  a  pot  of  yellow  paint. 
He's  a  wonder.  I  submitted  the  idea  to 
him." 

"  And  what  was  his  verdict  ?" 

"  I  don't  like  to  say,"  said  the  Idiot,  blush 
ing  a  little. 

"Ha!  ha!"  laughed  Mr.  Pedagog.  "I 
shouldn't  think  you  would  like  to  say.  I 
guess  we  know  what  he  said." 

"  I  doubt  it,"  said  the  Idiot ;  "  but  if  you 
guess  right,  I'll  tell  you." 

"  He  said  you  had  better  go  and  live  in  a 


to 


lunatic  asylum,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog,  with  a 
chuckle. 

"  Not  he,"  returned  the  Idiot,  nibbling  at 
his  biscuit.  "  On  the  contrary.  He  advised 
me  to  stop  living  in  one.  He  said  contact 
with  the  rest  of  you  was  affecting  my  brain." 

This  time  Mr.  Pedagog  did  not  laugh,  but 
mistaking  his  coffee-cup  for  a  piece  of  toast, 
bit  a  small  section  out  of  its  rim  ;  and  in  the 
midst  of  Mrs.  Pedagog's  expostulation,  which 
followed  the  School-Master's  careless  error, 
the  Idiot  and  the  Genial  Old  Gentleman  de 
parted,  with  smiles  on  their  faces  which  were 
almost  visible  at  the  back  of  their  respective 
necks. 


;<  HULLO  !"  said  the  Idiot,  as  he  began  his 
breakfast.  " This  isn't  Friday  morning,  is  it? 
I  thought  it  was  Tuesday." 

"  So  it  isTuesday,"putinthe  School-Master. 

"  Then  this  fish  is  a  little  extra  treat,  is  it  ?" 
observed  the  Idiot,  turning  with  a  smile  to 
the  landlady. 

"  Fish  ?  That  isn't  fish,  sir,"  returned  the 
good  lady.  "That  is  liver." 

"  Oh,  is  it  ?"  said  the  Idiot,  apologetically. 
"Excuse  me,  my  dear  Mrs.  Pedagog.  I 
thought  from  its  resistance  that  it  was  fried 
sole.  Have  you  a  hatchet  handy  ?"  he  add 
ed,  turning  to  the  maid. 

"My  piece  is  tender  enough.  I  can't  see 
what  you  want,"  said  the  School  -  Master, 
coldly. 

"I'd  like  your  piece,"  replied  the  Idiot, 
suavely.  "  That  is,  if  it  really  is  tender 
enough." 


"Don't  pay  any  attention  to  him,  my  dear," 
said  the  School-Master  to  the  landlady,  whose 
ire  was  so  very  much  aroused  that  she  was  • 
about  to  make  known  her  sentiments  on  cer 
tain  subjects. 

"No,  Mrs.  Pedagog,"  said  the  Idiot,  "don't 
pay  any  attention  to  me,  I  beg  of  you.  Any 
thing  that  could  add  to  the  jealousy  of  Mr. 
Pedagog  would  redound  to  the  discomfort  of 
all  of  us.  Besides,  I  really  do  not  object  to  the 
liver.  I  need  not  eat  it.  And  as  for  staying  my 
appetite,  I  always  stop  on  my  way  down-town 
after  breakfast  for  a  bite  or  two  anyhow." 

There  was  silence  for  a  moment. 

"I  wonder  why  it  is,"  began  the  Idiot, 
after  tasting  his  coffee — "  I  wonder  why  it 
is  Friday  is  fish-day  all  over  the  world,  any 
how  ?  Do  you  happen  to  be  learned  enough 
in  piscatorial  science  to  enlighten  me  on  that 
point,  Doctor  ?" 

"  No,"  returned  the  physician,  gruffly. 
"  I've  never  looked  into  the  matter." 

"  I  guess  it's  because  Friday  is  an  unlucky 
day,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  Just  think  of  all  the 
unlucky  things  that  may  happen  before  and 
after  eating  fish,  as  well  as  during  the  pro 
cess.  In  the  first  place,  before  eating,  you 
go  off  and  fish  all  day,  and  have  no  luck — • 


YOU   FISH    ALL    DAT,  AND    HAVE    NO    LUCK 


don't  catch  a  thing.  You  fall  in  the  water 
perhaps,  and  lose  your  watch,  or  your  fish 
hook  catches  in  your  coat-tails,  with  the  re 
sult  that  you  come  near  casting  yourself  in 
stead  of  the  fly  into  the  brook  or  the  pond,  as 
the  case  may  be.  Perhaps  the  hook  doesn't 
^top  with  the  coat-tails,  but  goes  on  in,  and 
catches  you.  That's  awfully  unlucky,  espe 
cially  when  the  hook  is  made  of  unusually 
barby  barbed  wire. 

"Then,  again,  you  may  go  fishing  on  some 
body  else's  preserves,  and  get  arrested,  and 
sent  to  jail  overnight,  and  hauled  up  the  next 
morning,  and  have  to  pay  ten  dollars  fine  for 
poaching.  Think  of  Mr.  Pedagog  being  fined 
ten  dollars  for  poaching  !  Awfully  unfort 
unate  !" 

"  Kindly  leave  me  out  of  your  calcula 
tions,"  returned  Mr.  Pedagog,  with  a  flush  of 
indignation. 

"  Certainly,  if  you  wish  it,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  We'll  hand  Mr.  Brief  over  to  the  police,  and 
let  him  be  fined  for  poaching  on  somebody 
else's  preserves — although  that's  sort  of  im 
possible,  too,  because  Mrs.  Pedagog  never  lets 
us  see  preserves  of  any  kind." 

"  We  had  brandied  peaches  last  Sunday 
night,"  said  the  landlady,  indignantly. 


H 


"  Oh  yes,  so  we  did,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"That  must  have  been  what  the  Bibliomaniac 
had  taken,"  he  added,  turning  to  the  genial 
gentleman  who  occasionally  imbibed.  "You 
know,  we  thought  he'd  been — ah — he'd  been 
absorbing." 

"  To  what  do  you  refer  ?"  asked  the  Biblio 
maniac,  curtly. 

"To  the  brandied  peaches,"  returned  the 
Idiot.  "  Do  not  press  me  further,  please,  be 
cause  we  like  you,  old  fellow,  and  I  don't  be 
lieve  anybody  noticed  it  but  ourselves." 

"  Noticed  what  ?  I  want  to  know  what  you 
noticed  and  when  you  noticed  it,"  said  the 
Bibliomaniac,  savagely.  "  I  don't  want  any 
nonsense,  either.  I  just  want  a  plain  state 
ment  of  facts.  What  did  you  notice  ?" 

"Well,  if  you  must  have  it,"  said  the  Idiot, 
slowly,  "  niy  friend  who  imbibes  and  I  were 
rather  pained  on  Sunday  night  to  observe  that 
you — that  you  had  evidently  taken  something 
rather  stronger  than  cold  watew^  tea,  or  Mr. 
Pedagog's  opinions." 

"  It's  a  libel,  sir  ! — a  gross  libel !"  retorted 
the  .Bibliomaniac.  "How  did  I  show  it? 
That's  what  I  want  to  know.  How — did — I 
—show — it  ?  Speak  up  quick,  and  loud  too. 
How  did  I  show  it  ?" 


HE  COULD  BE  HEARD  THROWING  THINGS  ABOUT 


"  Well,  you  went  up-stairs  after  tea." 

"Yes,  sir,  I  did." 

"And  my  friend  who  imbibes  and  I  were 
left  down  in  the  front  hall,  and  while  we  were 
talking  there  you  put  your  head  over  the  ban 
isters  and  asked,  '  Who's  that  down  there  ?' 
Remember  that  ?" 

"  Yes,  sir,  I  do.  And  you  replied,  *  Mr. 
Auburnose  and  myself.'" 

"Yes.  And  then  you  asked, '  Who  are  the 
other  two  ?'  " 

"Well,  I  did.     What  of  it?" 

"  Mr.  Auburnose  and  I  were  there  alone. 
That's  what  of  it.  Now  I  put  a  charitable 
construction  on  the  matter  and  say  it  was  the 
peaches,  when  you  fly  off  the  handle  like  one 
of  Mrs.  Pedagog's  coffee-cups." 

"  Sir  !"  roared  the  Bibliomaniac,  jumping 
from  his  chair.  "You  are  the  greatest  idiot 
I  know." 

"  Sir !"  returned  the  Idiot,  "  you  flatter 
me." 

But  the  Bibliomaniac  was  not  there  to 
hear.  He  had  rushed  from  the  room,  and 
during  the  deep  silence  that  ensued  he  could 
be  heard  throwing  things  about  in  the  cham 
ber  overhead,  and  in  a  very  few  moments  the 
banging  of  the  front  door  and  scurrying  down 


4ti 


the  brown  -  stone  steps  showed  that  lie  had 
gone  out  of  doors  to  cool  off. 

"  It  is  too  bad,"  said  the  Idiot,  after  a 
while,  "  that  he  has  such  a  quick  temper.  It 
doesn't  do  a  bit  of  good  to  get  mad  that  way. 
He'll  be  uncomfortable  all  day  long,  and  over 
what  ?  Just  because  I  attempted  to  say  a 
good  word  for  him,  and  announce  the  restora 
tion  of  my  confidence  in  his  temperance  qual 
ities,  he  cuts  up  a  high-jinks  that  makes  ev 
erybody  uncomfortable. 

"  But  to  resume  about  this  fish  business," 
continued  the  Idiot.  "  Fish—  '  t 

"  Oh,  fish  be  hanged  !"  said  the  Doctor,  im 
patiently.  "  We've  had  enough  of  fish." 

"  Very  well,"  returned  the  idiot  ;  "  as  you 
wish.  Hanging  isn't  the  best  treatment  for 
fish,  but  we'll  let  that  go.  I  never  cared  for 
the  finny  tribe  myself,  and  if  Mrs.  Pedagog 
can  be  induced  to  do  it,  I  for  one  am  in  favor 
of  keeping  shad,  shark,  and  shrimps  out  of 
the  house  altogether." 


VI 


THE  Idiot  was  unusually  thoughtful— a  fact 
which  made  the  School-Master  and  the  Bib 
liomaniac  unusually  nervous.  Their  stock 
criticism  of  him  was  that  he  was  thoughtless ; 
and  yet  when  he  so  far  forgot  his  natural  pro 
pensities  as  to  meditate,  they  did  not  like  it. 
It  made  them  uneasy.  They  had  a  haunting 
fear  that  he  was  conspiring  with  himself 
against  them,  and  no  man,  not  even  a  callous 
school-master  or  a  confirmed  bibliomaniac, 
enjoys  feeling  that  he  is  the  object  of  a  con 
spiracy.  The  thing  to  do,  then,  upon  this 
occasion,  seemed  obviously  to  interrupt  his 
train  of  thought — to  put  obstructions  upon 
his  mental  track,  as  it  were,  and  ditch 
the  express,  which  they  feared  was  get 
ting  up  steam  at  that  moment  to  run  them 
down. 

"  You  don't  seem  quite  yourself  this  morn 
ing,  sir,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 


IS 


"  Don't  I  ?"  queried  the  Idiot.  "And  whom 
do  I  seem  to  be?" 

"  I  mean  that  you  seem  to  have  something 
on  your  mind  that  worries  you,"  said  the 
Bibliomaniac. 

"•No,  I  haven't  anything  on  my  mind,"  re 
turned  the  Idiot.  "  I  was  thinking  about  you 
and  Mr.  Pedagog — which  implies  a  thought 
not  likely  to  use  up  much  of  my  gray  matter." 

"  Do  you  think  your  head  holds  any  gray 
matter  ?"  put  in'  the  Doctor. 

"  Rather  verdant,  I  should  say,"  said  Mr. 
Pedagog. 

"  Green,  gray,  or  pink,"  said  the  Idiot, 
"  choose  your  color.  It  does  not  affect  the 
fact  that  I  was  thinking  about  the  Biblio 
maniac  and  Mr.  Pedagog.  I  have  a  great 
scheme  in  hand,  which  only  requires  capital 
and  the  assistance  of  those  two  gentlemen  to 
launch  it  on  the  sea  of  prosperity.  If  any  of 
you  gentlemen  want  to  get  rich  and  die  in 
comfort  as  the  owner  of  your  homes,  now  is 
your  chance." 

"In  what  particular  line  of  business  is  your 
scheme  ?"  asked  Mr.  Whitechoker.  He  had 
often  felt  that  he  would  like  to  die  in  com 
fort,  and  to  own  a  little  house,  even  if  it  had 
a  large  mortgage  on  it. 


L9 


"  Journalism,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  There  is  a 
pile  of  money  to  be  made  out  of  journalism, 
particularly  if  you  happen  to  strike  a  new 
idea.  Ideas  count." 

"  How  far  up  do  your  ideas  count — up  to 
five  ?"  questioned  Mr.  Pedagog,  with  a  tinge 
of  sarcasm  in  his  tone. 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  returned  the 
Idiot.  "  The  idea  I  have  hold  of  now,  how 
ever,  will  count  up  into  the  millions  if  it  can 
only  be  set  going,  and  before  each  one  of 
those  millions  will  stand  a  big  capital  S  with 
two  black  lines  drawn  vertically  through  it 
— in  other  words,  my  idea  holds  dollars,  but 
to  get  the  crop  you've  got  to  sow  the  seed. 
Plant  a  thousand  dollars  in  my  idea,  and  next 
year  you'll  reap  two  thousand.  Plant  that, 
and  next  year  you'll  have  four  thousand, 
and  so  on.  At  that  rate  millions  come 
easy." 

"  I'll  give  you  a  dollar  for  the  idea,"  said 
the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  No,  I  don't  want  to  sell.  You'll  do  to 
help  develop  the  scheme.  You'll  make  a 
first -rate  tool,  but  you  aren't  the  workman 
to  manage  the  tool.  I  will  go  as  far  as  to 
say,  however,  that  without  you  and  Mr.  Ped 
agog,  or  your  equivalents  in  the  animal  king- 


50 


dom,  the  idea  isn't  worth  the  fabulous  sum 
you  offer." 

"You  have  quite  aroused  my  interest," 
said  Mr.  Whitechoker.  "  Do  you  propose  to 
start  a  new  paper  ?" 

"  You  are  a  good  guesser,"  replied  the  Idiot. 
"  That  is  a  part  of  the  scheme — but  it  isn't 
the  idea.  I  propose  to  start  a  new  paper  in 
accordance  with  the  plan  which  the  idea  con 
tains." 

"  Is  it  to  be  a  magazine,  or  a  comic  paper, 
or  what  ?"  asked  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"Neither.     It's  a  daily." 

"  That's  nonsense,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog,  put 
ting  his  spoon  into  the  condensed-milk  can  by 
mistake.  "  There  isn't  a  single  scheme  in 
daily  journalism  that  hasn't  been  tried — ex 
cept  printing  an  evening  paper  in  the  morn- 
ing." 

"That's  been  tried,"  said  the  Idiot.  "I 
know  of  an  evening  paper  the  second  edition 
of  which  is  published  at  mid-day.  That's  an 
old  dodge,  and  there's  money  in  it,  too — 
money  that  will  never  be  got  out  of  it.  But 
I  really  have  a  grand  scheme.  So  many  of 
our  dailies,  you  know,  go  in  for  every  horrid 
detail  of  daily  events  that  people  are  begin 
ning  to  tire  of  them.  They  contain  practical- 


"HE  WAS  NOT  MURDERED" 


ly  the  same  things  day  after  day.  So  many 
columns  of  murder,  so  many  beautiful  sui 
cides,  so  much  sport,  a  modicum  *of  general 
intelligence,  plenty  of  fires,  no  end  of  embez 
zlements,  financial  news,  advertisements,  and 
head-lines.  Events,  like  history,  repeat  them 
selves,  until  people  have  grown  weary  of 
them.  They  want  something  new.  For  in 
stance,  if  you  read  in  your  morning  paper 
that  a  man  has  shot  another  man,  you  know 
that  the  man  who  was*shot  was  an  inoffen 
sive  person  who  never  injured  a  soul,  stood 
high  in  the  community  in  which  he  lived,  and 
leaves  a  widow  with  four  children.  On  the 
other  hand,  you  know  without  reading  the 
account  that  the  murderer  shot  his  victim  in 
self-defence,  and  was  apprehended  by  the  de 
tectives  late  last  night ;  that  his  counsel  for 
bid  him  to  talk  to  the  reporters,  and  that  it 
is  rumored  that  he  comes  of  a  good  family 
living  in  New  England. 

"If  a  breach  of  trust  is  committed,  you 
know  that  the  defaulter  was  the  last  man  of 
whom  such  an  act  would  be  suspected,  and, 
except  in  the  one  detail  of  its  location  and 
sect,  that  he  was  prominent  in  some  church. 
You  can  calculate  to  a  cent  how  much  has  been 
stolen  by  a  glance  at  the  amount  of  space  de- 


voted  to  the  account  of  the  crime.  Loaf  of 
bread,  two  lines.  Thousand  dollars,  ten  lines. 
Hundred  thousand  dollars,  half-column.  Mill 
ion  dollars,  a  full  column.  Five  million  dol 
lars,  half  the  front  page,  wood-cut  of  the  em 
bezzler,  and  two  editorials,  one  leader  and  one 
paragraph. 

"  And  s<5  with  everything.  We  are  creat 
ures  of  habit.  The  expected  always  happens, 
and  newspapers  are  dull  because  the  events 
they  chronicle  are  drill." 

"  Granting  the  truth  of  this,"  put  in  the 
School -Master,  "what  do  you  propose  to 
do?" 

"  Get  up  a  newspaper  that  will  devote  its 
space  to  telling  what  hasn't  happened." 

"  That's  been  done,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"To  a  much  more  limited  extent  than  we 
think,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "It  has  never 
been  done  consistently  and  truthfully." 

"  I  fail  to  see  how  a  newspaper  can  be 
made  to  prevaricate  truthfully,"  asserted  Mr. 
Whitechoker.  To  tell  the  truth,  he  was  great 
ly  disappointed  with  the  idea,  because  he 
could  not  in  the  nature  of  things  become  one 
of  its  beneficiaries. 

"I  haven't  suggested  prevarication,"  said 
the  Idiot.  "Put  on  your  front  page,  for  in- 


"SUPERINTENDENT  SMITHERS  HAS  NOT  ABSCONDED" 


58 


stance,  an  item  like,  this  :  '  George  Bronson, 
colored,  aged  twenty -nine,  a  resident  of 
Thompson  Street,  was  caught  cheating  at 
poker  last  night.  He  was  not  murdered.' 
There  you  tell  what  has  not  happened.  There 
is  a  variety  about  it.  It  has  the  charm  of  the 
unexpected.  Then  you  might  say :  *  Curious 
incident  on  Wall  Street  yesterday.  So-and- 
so,  who  was  caught  on  the  bear  side  of  the 
market  with  10,000  shares  of  J.  B.  &  S.  K.  W., 
paid  off  all  his  obligations  in  full,  and  retired 
from  business  with  $1,000,000  clear.'  Or  we 
might  say,  *  Superintendent  Smithers,  of  the 
St.  Goliath's  Sunday-school,  who  is  also  cash 
ier  in  the  Forty-eighth  National  Bank,  has 
not  absconded  with  $4,000,000.'" 

"  Oh,  that's  a  rich  idea,"  put  in  the  School- 
Master.  "You'd  earn  $1,000,000  in  libel  suits 
the  first  year." 

"  No,  you  wouldn't,  either,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"You  don't  libel  a  man  when  you  say  he 
hasn't  murdered  anybody.  Quite  the  con 
trary,  you  call  attention  to  his  conspicuous 
virtue.  You  are  in  reality  commending  those 
who  refrain  from  criminal  practice,  instead 
of  delighting  those  who  are  fond  of  depart 
ing  from  the  paths  of  Christianity  by  giving 
them  notoriety." 


"  But  I  fail  to  see  in  what  respect  Mr.  Ped- 
agog  and  I  are  essential  to  your  scheme," 
said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  I  must  confess  to  some  curiosity  on  ray 
own  part  on  that  point,"  added  the  School- 
Master. 

"  Why,  it's  perfectly  clear,"  returned  the 
Idiot,  with  a  conciliating  smile  as  he  prepared 
to  depart.  "You  both  know  so  much  that 
isn't  so,  that  I  rather  rely  on  you  to  fill  up." 


VII 


A  NEW  boarder  had  joined  the  circle  about 
Mrs.  Pedagog's  breakfast -table.  He  had 
what  the  Idiot  called  a  three-ply  name — 
which  was  Richard  Henderson  Warren — and 
he  was  by  profession  a  poet.  Whether  it  was 
this  that  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  board 
or  not,  the  rewards  of  the  muse  being  rather 
slender,  was  known  only  to  himself,  and  he 
showed  no  disposition  to  enlighten  his  fel 
low-boarders  on  the  subject.  His  success  as  a 
poet  Mrs.  Pedagog  found  it  hard  to  gauge  ; 
for  while  the  postman  left  almost  daily  nu 
merous  letters,  the  envelopes  of  which  showed 
that  they  came  from  the  various  periodicals 
of  the  day,  it  was  never  exactly  clear  whether 
or -not  the  missives  contained  remittances  or 
rejected  manuscripts,  though  the  fact  that 
Mr.  Warren  was  the  only  boarder  in  the 
house  who  had  requested  to  have  a  waste- 
basket  added  to  the  furniture  of  his  room 


56 


seemed  to  indicate  that  they  contained  the 
latter.  To  this  request  Mrs.  Pedagog  had 
gladly  acceded,  because  she  had  a  notion  that 
therein  at  some  time  or  another  would  be 
found  a  clew  to  the  new  boarder's  past  his 
tory — or  possibly  some  evidence  of  such  du 
plicity  as  the  good  lady  suspected  he  might 
be  guilty  of.  She  had  read  that  Byron  was 
profligate,  and  that  Poe  was  addicted  to 
drink,  and  she  was  impressed  with  the  idea 
that  poets  generally  were  bad  men,  and  she 
regarded  the  waste-basket  as  a  possible  means 
of  protecting  herself  against  any  such  idiosyn 
crasies  of  her  new-found  genius  as  would 
operate  to  her  disadvantage  if  not  looked 
after  in  time. 

This  waste-basket  she  made  it  her  daily 
duty  to  empty,  and  in  the  privacy  of  her 
own  room.  Half-finished  "ballads,  songs, 
and  snatches"  she  perused  before  consign 
ing  them  to  the  flames  or  to  the  large  jute 
bag  in  the  cellar,  for  which  the  ragman  called 
two  or  three  times  a  year.  Once  Mrs.  Peda- 
gog's  heart  almost  stopped  beating  when  she 
found  at  the  bottom  of  the  basket  a  printed 
slip  beginning,  "  The  Editor  regrets  that  the 
enclosed  lines  are  unavailable"  and  closing 
with  about  thirteen  reasons,  any  one  or  all 


of  which  might  have  been  the  main  cause  of 
the  poet's  disappointment.  Had  it  not  been 
for  the  kindly  clause  in  the  printed  slip  that 
insinuated  in  graceful  terms  that  ttys  rejec 
tion  did  not  imply  a  lack  of  literary  merit 
in  the  contribution  itself,  the  good  lad}% 
knowing  well  that  there  was  even  less  money 
to  be  made  from  rejected  than  from  accept 
ed  poetry,  would  have  been  inclined  to  re 
quest  the  poet  to  vacate  the  premises.  The 
very  next  day,  however,  she  was  glad  she 
had  not  requested  the  resignation  of  the  poet 
from  the  laureateship  of  her  house  ;  for  the 
same  basket  gave  forth  another  printed  slip 
from  another  editor,  begging  the  poet  to 
accept  the  enclosed  check,  with  thanks  for 
his  contribution,  and  asking  him  to  de 
posit  it  as  soon  as  practicable  —  which 
was  pleasing  enough,  since  it  implied 
that  the  poet  was  the  possessor  of  a  bank 
account. 

Now  Mrs.  Pedagog  was  consumed  with  cu 
riosity  to  know  for  how  large  a  sum  the  check 
called — which  desire  was  gratified  a  few  days 
later,  when  the  inspired  boarder  paid  his 
week's  bill  with  three  one-dollar  bills  and  a 
check,  signed  by  a  well-known  publisher,  for 
two  dollars. 


58 


By  the  boarders  themselves  the  poet  was 
regarded  with  much  interest.  The  School- 
Master  had  read  one  or  two  of  his  effusions 
in  the  fireside  Corner  of  the  journal  he  re 
ceived  weekly  from  his  home  up  in  New 
England — eifusions  which  showed  no  little 
merit,  as  well  as  indicating  that  Mr.  Warren 
wrote  for  a  literary  syndicate  ;  Mr.  White- 
choker  had  known  of  him  as  the  young  man 
who  was  to  have  written  a  Christmas  carol 
for  his  Sunday-school  a  year  before,  and  who 
had  finished  and  presented  the  manuscript 
shortly  after  New-Year's  day  ;  while  to  the 
Idiot,  Mr.  Warren's  name  was  familiar  as  that 
of  a  frequent  contributor  to  the  funny  papers 
of  the  day. 

"  I  was  very  much  amused  by  your  poem 
in  the  last  number  of  the  Observer,  Mr.  War 
ren,"  said  the  Idiot,  as  they  sat  down  to 
breakfast  together. 

"  Were  you,  indeed  ?"  returned  Mr.  War 
ren.  "  I  am  sorry  to  hear  that,  for  it  was 
intended  to  be  a  serious  effort." 

"  Of  course  it  was,  Mr.  Warren,  and  so  it 
appeared,''  said  the  School-Master,  with  an 
indignant  glance  at  the  Idiot.  "  It  was  a 
very  dignified  and  stately  bit  of  work,  and  I 
must  congratulate  you  upon  it." 


TUE   INSPIRED    BOARDER    I'AID   HIS   BILL 


"  I  didn't  mean  to  give  offence,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  I've  read  so  much  of  yours  that  was 
purely  humorous  that  I  believe  I'd  laugh  at 
a  dirge  if  you  should  write  one  ;  but  I  really 
thought  your  lines  in  the  Observer  were  a 
burlesque.  You  had  the  same  thought  that 
Rossettrfexpresses  in  'The  Woodspurge': 

'  The  wind  flapped  loose,  the  wind  was  still, 
Shaken  out  dead  from  tree  to  hill  ; 
I  had  walked  on  at  the  wind's  will, 
I  sat  now,  for  the  wind  was  still.' 

That's  Rossetti,  if  you  remember.  Slightly 
suggestive  of  l  Blow  Ye  Winds  of  the  Morn 
ing  !  Blow  !  Blow  !  Blow  !'  but  more  or  less 
pleasing." 

"I  recall  the  poem  you  speak  of,"  said 
Warren,  with  dignity  ;  "but  the  true  poet, 
sir — and  I  hope  I  have  some  claim  to  be  con 
sidered  as  such — never  so  far  forgets  himself 
as  to  burlesque  his  masters." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  what  to  call  it,  then, 
when  a  poet  takes  the  same  thought  that  has 
previously  been  used  by  his  masters  and 
makes  a  funny  poem — 

"  But,"  returned  the  Poet,  warmly,  "  it  was 
not  a  funny  poem." 

"  It  made  me  laugh,"  retorted  the  Idiot, 


"  and  that  is  more  than  half  the  professedly 
funny  poems  we  get  nowadays  can  do.  There 
fore  I  say  it  was  a  funny  poem,  and  I  don't 
see  how  you  can  deny  that  it  was  a  burlesque 
of  Rossetti." 

"  Well,  I  do  deny  it  in  toto" 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  denying  it 
in  toto"  rejoined  the  Idiot,  "  but  I'd  deny  it 
in  print  if  I  were  you.  I  know  plenty  of 
people  who  think  it  was  a  burlesque,  and  I 
overheard  one  man  say  —  he  is  a  Rossetti 
crank  —  that  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of 
yourself  for  writing  it." 

"  There  is  no  use  of  discussing  the  matter 
further,"  said  the  Poet.  "  I  am  innocent  of 
any  such  intent  as  you  have  ascribed  to  me, 
and  if  people  say  I  have  burlesqued  Rossetti 
they  say  what  is  not  true." 

"Did  you  ever  read  that  little  poem  of 
Swinburne's  called  '  The  Boy  at  the  Gate '  ?" 
asked  the  Idiot,  to  change  the  subject. 

"  I  have  no  recollection  of  it,"  said  the  Poet, 
shortly. 

"  The  name  sounds  familiar,"  put  in  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  anxious  not  to  be  left  out  of  a 
literary  discussion. 

"  I  have  read  it,  but  I  forget  just  how  it 
goes,"  vouchsafed  the  School-Master,  forget- 


61 


ting  for  a  moment  the  Robert  Elsmere  ep 
isode  and  its  lesson. 

"It  goes  something  like  this,"  said  the 
Idiot: 

"Sombre  and  sere  the  slim  sycamore  sighs; 
Lushly  the  lithe  leaves  lie  low  o'er  the  land; 
Whistles  the  wind  with  its  whisperings  wise, 
Grewsomely  gloomy  and  garishly  grand. 
So  doth  the  sycamore  solemnly  stand, 
Wearily  watching  in  wondering  wait ; 
So  it  has  stood  for  six  centuries,  and 
Still  it  is  waiting  the  boy  at  the  gate." 

"No;  I  never  read  the  poem,"  said  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  "  but  I'd  know  it  was  Swin 
burne  in  a  minute.  He  has  such  a  command 
of  alliterative  language." 

"Yes,"  said  the  Poet,  with  an  uneasy  glance 
at  the  Idiot.  "It  is  Swinburnian  ;  but  what 
was  the  poem  about  ?" 

"  <  The  boy  at  the  gate,' "  said  the  Idiot. 
"  The  idea  was  that  the  sycamore  was  stand 
ing  there  for  centuries  waiting  for  the  boy 
who  never  turns  up." 

"It  really  is  a  beautiful  thought,"  put  in 
Mr.  Whitechoker.  "  It  is,  I  presume,  an  alle 
gory  to  contrast  faithful  devotion  and  con 
stancy  with  unfaithfulness  and  fickleness. 


Such  thoughts  occur  only  to  the  wholly  gift 
ed.  It  is  only  to  the  poetic  temperament 
that  the  conception  of  such  a  thought  can 
come  coupled  with  the  ability  to  voice  it  in 
fitting  terms.  There  is  a  grandeur  about  the 
lines  the  Idiot  has  quoted  that  betrays  the 
master-mind." 

"Very  true,"  said  the  School-Master,  "and 
I  take  this  opportunity  to  say  that  I  am  most 
agreeably  surprised  in  the  Idiot.  It  is  no 
small  thing  even  to  be  able  to  repeat  a  poet's 
lines  so  carefully,  and  with  so  great  lucidity, 
and  so  accurately,  as  I  can  testify  that  he  has 
just  done." 

"Don't  be  too  pleased,  Mr.  Pedagog," 
said  the  Idiot,  dryly.  "I  only  wanted  to 
show  Mr.  Warren  that  you  and  Mr.  White- 
choker,  mines  of  information  though  you  are, 
have  not  as  yet  worked  up  a  corner  on 
knowledge  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest  of 
us."  And  with  these  words  the  Idiot  left  the 
table. 

"He  is  a  queer  fellow,"  said  the  School- 
Master.  "He  is  full  of  pretence  and  hol- 
lowness,  but  he  is  sometimes  almost  brill 
iant." 

"  What  you  say  is  very  true,"  said  Mr. 
Whitechoker.  "I  think  he  has  just  escaped 


"  i  KNOW  YOU  CAN'T,  BECAUSE  IT  ISN'T  THERE  " 


68 


being  a  smart  man.  I  wish  we  could  take 
him  in  hand,  Mr.  Pedagog,  and  make  him 
more  of  a  fellow  than  he  is." 

Later  in  the  day  the  Poet  met  the  Idiot  on 
the  stairs.  "I  say,"  he  said,  "I've  looked  all 
through  Swinburne,  and  I  can't  find  that 
poem." 

"  I  know  you  can't,"  returned  the  Idiot, "  be 
cause  it  isn't  there.  Swinburne  never  wrote 
it.  It  was  a  little  thing  of  my  own.  I  was 
only  trying  to  get  a  rise  out  of  Mr.  Pedagog 
and  his  Reverence  with  it.  You  have  fre 
quently  appeared  impressed  by  the  undoubt 
edly  impressive  manner  of  these  two  gen 
tlemen.  I  wanted  to  show  you  what  their 
opinions  were  worth." 

"Thank  you,"  returned  the  Poet,  with  a 
smile.  "  Don't  you  want  to  go  into  partner 
ship  with  me  and  write  for  the  funny  papers  ? 
It  would  be  a  splendid  thing  for  me — your 
ideas  are  so  original." 

"  And  I  can  see  fun  in  everything,  too," 
said  the  Idiot,  thoughtfully. 

"Yes,"  returned  the  Poet.  "Even  in  my 
serious  poems." 

Which  remark  made  the  Idiot  blush  a  lit 
tle,  but  he  soon  recovered  his  composure  and 
made  a  firm  friend  of  the  Poet. 


64 


The  first  fruits  of  the  partnership  have  not 
yet  appeared,  however. 

As  for  Messrs.  Whitechoker  and  Pedagog, 
when  they  learned  how  they  had  been  de 
ceived,  they  were  so  indignant  that  they  did 
not  speak  to  the  Idiot  for  a  week. 


VIII 

IT  was  Sunday  morning,  and  Mr.  White- 
choker,  as  was  his  wont  on  the  first  day  of 
the  week,  appeared  at  the  breakfast  table  se 
vere  as  to  his  mien. 

"  Working  on  Sunday  weighs  on  liis  mind," 
the  Idiot  said  to  the  Bibliomaniac,  "  but  I 
don't  see  why  it  should.  The  luxury  of  rest 
that  he  allows  himself  the  other  six  days  of 
the  week  is  surely  an  atonement  for  the  hours 
of  labor  he  puts  in  on  Sunday." 

But  it  was  not  this  that  on  Sunday  morn 
ings  weighed  on  the  mind  of  the  Reverend 
Mr.  Whitechoker.  He  appeared  more  serious 
of  visage  then  because  he  had  begun  to  think 
of  late  that  his  fellow  -  boarders  lived  too 
much  in  the  present,  and  ignored  almost  to 
tally  that  which  might  be  expected  to  come. 
He  had  been  revolving  in  his  mind  for  sever 
al  weeks  the  question  as  to  whether  it  was  or 
was  not  his  Christian  duty  to  attempt  to  in- 


fluence  the  lives  of  these  men  with  whom  the 
chances  of  life -had  brought  him  in  contact. 
He  had  finally  sensed  it  to  his  own  satisfac 
tion  that  it  was  his  duty  so  to  do,  and  he  had 
resolved,  as  far  as  lay  in  his  power,  to  direct 
the  conversation  at  Sunday  morning's  break 
fast  into  spiritual  rather  than  into  temporal 
matters. 

So,  as  Mrs.  Pedagog  was  pouring  the  coffee, 
Mr.  Whitechoker  began  : 

"Do  you  gentlemen  ever  pause  in  your 
every -day  labors  and  thought  to  let  your 
minds  rest  upon  the  future  —  the  possibili 
ties  it  has  in  store  for  us,  the  consequences 
which—" 

"  No  mush,  thank  you,"  said  the  Idiot. 
Then  turning  to  Mr.  Whitechoker,  he  added  : 
"I  can't  answer  for  the  other  gentlemen  at 
this  board,  but  I  can  assure  you,  Mr.  White- 
choker,  that  I  often  do  so.  It  was  only  last 
night,  sir,  that  my  genial  friend  who  imbibes 
and  I  were  discussing  the  future  and  its  pos 
sibilities,  and  I  venture  to  assert  that  there  is 
no  more  profitable  food  for  reflection  any 
where  in  the  larders  of  the  mind  than  that." 

"  Larders  of  the  mind  is  excellent,"  said  the 
School-Master,  with  a  touch  of  sarcasm  in  his 
voice.  "  Perhaps  you  would  not  mind  open- 


ing  the  door  to  your  mental  pantry,  and  let 
ting  us  peep  within  at  the  stores  you  keep 
there.  I  am  sure  that  on  the  subject  in  hand 
your  views  cannot  fail  to  be  original  as  well 
as  edifying." 

"I  am  also  sure,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker, 
somewhat  surprised  to  hear  the  Idiot  speak 
as  he  did,  having  sometimes  ventured  to 
doubt  if  that  flippant-minded  young  man  ever 
reflected  on  the  serious  side  of  life — "I  arn 
also  sure  that  it  is  most  gratifying  to  hear 
that  you  have  done  some  thinking  on  the 
subject." 

"  I  am  glad  you  are  gratified,  Mr.  White- 
choker,"  replied  the  Idio^  "  but  I  am  far  from 
taking  undue  credit  to  myself  because  I  re 
flect  upon  the  future  and  its  possibilities.  I 
do  not  see  how  any  man  can  fail  to  be  inter 
ested  in  the  subject,  particularly  when  he 
considers  the  great  strides  science  has  made 
in  the  last  twenty  years." 

"I  fail  to  see,"  said  the  School  -  Master, 
"  what  the  strides  of  science  have  to  do  with 
it." 

"You  fail  to  see  so  often,  Mr.  Pedagog," 
returned  the  Idiot,  "that  I  would  advise  your 
eyes  to  make  an  assignment  in  favor  of  your 
pupils." 


68 


"  I  must  confess,"  put  in  Mr.  Whitechoker, 
blandly,  "  that  I  too  am  somewhat — er — some 
what — " 

"  Somewhat  up  a  tree  as  to  science's  con 
nection  with  the  future  ?"  queried  the  Idiot. 

"  You  have  my  meaning,  but  hardly  the 
phraseology  I  should  have  chosen,"  replied 
the  minister. 

"  My  style  is  rather  epigrammatic,"  said  the 
Idiot,  suavely.  "  I  appreciate  the  flattery  im 
plied  by  your  noticing  it.  But  science  has 
everything  to  do  with  it.  It  is  science  that  is 
going  to  make  the  future  great.  It  is  science 
that  has  annihilated  distance,  and  the  anni 
hilation  has  just  begun.  Twenty  years  ago  it 
was  hardly  possible  for  a  man  standing  on 
one  side  of  the  street  to  make  himself  heard 
on  the  other,  the  acoustic  properties  of  the  at 
mosphere  not  being  what  they  should  be.  To 
day  you  can  stand  in  the  pulpit  of  your 
church,  and  by  means  of  certain  scientific  ap 
paratus  make  yourself  heard  in  Boston,  New 
Orleans,  or  San  Francisco.  Has  this  no  bear 
ing  on  the  future  ?  The  time  will  come,  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  when  your  missionaries  will  be 
able  to  sit  in  their  comfortable  rectories,  and 
ring  up  the  heathen  in  foreign  climes,  and 
convert  them  over  the  telephone,  without  run- 


YOU  CAN  MAKE  YOURSELF  HEARD  IN  SAN  FRANCISCO  " 


ning  the  slightest  danger  of  falling  into  the 
soup,  which  expression  I  use  in  its  literal 
rather  than  in  its  metaphorical  sense." 

"  But — "  interrupted  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"Now  wait,  please,"  said  the  Idiot.  "If 
science  can  annihilate  degrees  of  distance, 
who  shall  say  that  before  many  days  science 
may  not  annihilate  degrees  of  time  ?  If  San 
Francisco,  thousands  of  miles  distant,  can  be 
brought  within  range  of  the  ear,  why  cannot 
1990  be  brought  before  the  mind's  eye  ?  And 
if  1990  can  be  brought  before  the  mind's  eye, 
what  is  to  prevent  the  invention  of  a  prophet- 
ograph  which  shall  enable  us  to  cast  a  hor 
oscope  which  shall  reach  all  around  eternity 
and  half-way  back,  if  not  further?" 

"  You  do  not  understand  me,"  said  Mr. 
Whitechoker.  "  When  I  speak  of  the  future, 
I  do  not  mean  the  temporal  future." 

"I  know  exactly  what  you  mean,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  I've  dealt  in  futures,  and  I  am  famil 
iar  with  all  kinds.  It  is  you,  sir,  that  do  not 
understand  me.  My  claim  is  perfectly  plausi 
ble,  and  in  its  results  is  bound  to  make  the 
world  better.  Do  you  suppose  that  any  man 
who, by  the  aid  of  my  prophetograph,  sees  that 
on  a  certain  date  in  the  future  he  will  be  hanged 
for  murder  is  going  to  fail  to  provide  himself 

7 


70 


with  an  alibi  in  regard  to  that  particular  mur 
der,  and  must  we  not  admit  that  having  pro 
vided  himself  with  that  alibi  he  will  of  ne 
cessity  avoid  bloodshed,  and  so  avoid  the  gal 
lows  ?  That's  reasonable.  So  in  regard  to  all 
the  thousand  and  one  other  peccadilloes  that 
go  to  make  this  life  a  sinful  one.  Science,  by 
a  purely  logical  advance  along  the  lines  al 
ready  mapped  out  for  itself,  and  in  part  al 
ready  traversed,  wrill  enable  men  to  avoid  the 
pitfalls  and  reap  only  the  windfalls  of  life  ; 
we  shall  all  see  what  terrible  consequences 
await  on  a  single  misstep,  and  we  shall  not 
make  the  misstep.  Can  you  still  claim  that 
science  and  the  future  have  nothing  to  do 
with  each  other?" 

"You  are  talking  of  matters  purely  tem 
poral,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker.  "I  have  ref 
erence  to  our  spiritual  future." 

"  And  the  two,"  observed  the  Idiot,  "  are  so 
closely  allied  that  we  cannot  separate  them. 
The  proverb  about  looking  after  the  pennies 
and  letting  the  pounds  take  care  of  them 
selves  applies  here.  I  believe  that  if  I  take 
care  of  my  temporal  future  —  which,  by-the- 
way,  does  not  exist — my  spiritual  future  will 
take  care  of  itself;  and  if  science  places  the 
hereafter  before  us — and  you  admit  that  even 


THE   PKOPHETOGRAPH 


now  it  is  before  us  —  all  we  have  to  do  is  to 
take  advantage  of  our  opportunities,  and  mend 
our  lives  accordingly." 

"  But  if  science  shows  you  what  is  to  come," 
said  the  School-Master,  "it  rnust  show  your  fate 
with  perfect  accuracy,  or  it  ceases  to  be  science, 
in  which  event  your  entertaining  notions  as 
to  reform  and  so  on  are  entirely  fallacious." 

"  Not  at  all,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  We  are  ap 
proaching  the  time  when  science,  which  is 
much  more  liberal  than  any  other  branch  of 
knowledge,  will  sacrifice  even  truth  itself  for 
the  good  of  mankind." 

"  You  ought  to  start  a  paradox  company," 
suggested  the  Doctor. 

"  Either  that  or  make  himself  the  nucleus 
of  an  insane  asylum,"  observed  the  School- 
Master,  viciously.  "I  never  knew  a  man  with 
such  maniacal  views  as  those  we  have  heard 
this  morning." 

"There  is  a  great  deal,  Mr.  Pedagog,  that 
you  have  never  known,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"Stick  by  me,  and  you'll  die  with  a  mind 
richly  stored." 

Whereat  the  School-Master  left  the  table 
with  such  manifest  impatience  that  Mr.  White- 
choker  was  sorry  he  had  started  the  conversa 
tion. 


The  genial  gentleman  who  occasionally  im 
bibed  and  the  Idiot  withdrew  to  the  hitter's 
room,  where  the  former  observed  : 

"What  are  you  driving  at,  anyhow?  Where 
did  you  get  those  crazy  ideas  ?" 

"I  ate  a  Welsn  -  rarebit  last  night,  and 
dreamed  'em,"  returned  the  Idiot. 

"I  thought  as  much,"  said  his  companion. 
"  What  deuced  fine  things  dreams  are,  any 
how  !" 


IX 


BREAKFAST  was  very  nearly  over,  and  it 
was  of  such  exceptionally  good  quality  that 
very  few  remarks  had  been  made.  Finally 
the  ball  was  set  rolling  by  the  Lawyer. 

"  How  many  packs  of  cigarettes  do  you 
smoke  a  day  ?"  he  asked,  as  the  Idiot  took 
one  from  his  pocket  and  placed  it  at  the  side 
of  his  coffee-cup. 

"Never  more  than  forty -six,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  Why  ?  Do  you  think  of  starting  a 
cigarette  stand  ?" 

"  Not  at  all,"  said  Mr.  Brief.  "  I  was  only 
wondering  what  chance  you  had  to  live  to 
maturity,  that's  all.  Your  maturity  period 
will  be  in  about  eight  hundred  and  sixty 
years  from  now,  the  way  I  calculate,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  that,  judging  from  the  number 
of  cigarettes  you  smoke,  you  were  not  likely 
to  last  through  more  than  two  or  three  of 
those  years." 


"Oh,  I  expect  to  live  longer  than  that," 
said  the  Idiot.  "  I  think  I'm  good  for  at 
least  four  years.  Don't  you,  Doctor?" 

"I  decline-to  have  anything  to  say  about 
your  case,"  retorted  the  Doctor,  whose  feel 
ing  towards  the  Idiot  was  not  surpassingly 
affectionate. 

"In  that  event  I  shall  probably  live  five 
years  more,"  said  the  Idiot. 

The  Doctor's  lip  curled,  but  he  remained 
silent. 

"  You'll  live,"  put  in  Mr.  Pedagog,  with  a 
chuckle.  "The  good  die  young." 

"  How  did  you  happen  to  keep  alive  all 
this  time  then,  Mr.  Pedagog  ?"  asked  the 
Idiot. 

"  I  have  always  eschewed  tobacco  in  every 
form,  for  one  thing,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  I  am  surprised,"  put  in  the  Idiot.  "That's 
really  a  bad  habit,  and  I  marvel  greatly  that 
you  should  have  done  it." 

The  School-Master  frowned,  and  looked  at 
the  Idiot  over  the  rims  of  his  glasses,  as  was 
his  wont  when  he  was  intent  upon  getting 
explanations. 

"Done  what?"  he  asked,  severely. 

"  Chewed  tobacco,"  replied  the  Idiot. 
"You  just  said  that  one  of  the  things  that 


has  kept  you  lingering  in  this  vale  of  tears 
was  that  you  have  always  chewed  tobacco. 
I  never  did  that,  and  I  never  shall  do  it,  be 
cause  I  deem  it  a  detestable  diversion." 

"I  didn't  say  anything  of  the  sort,"  re 
torted  Mr.  Pedagog,  getting  red  in  the  face. 
"  I  never  said  that  I  chewed  tobacco  in  any 
form." 

"Oh,  come!"  said  the  Idiot,  with  well- 
feigned  impatience,  "  what's  the  use  of  talk 
ing  that  way  ?  We  all  heard  what  you  said, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  that  it  came  as  a  shock 
to  every  member  of  this  assemblage.  It  cer 
tainly  was  a  shock  to  me,  because,  with  all 
my  weaknesses  and  bad  habits,  I  think  to 
bacco-chewing  unutterably  bad.  The  worst 
part  of  it  is  that  you  chew  it  in  every  form. 
A  man  who  chews  chewing-tobacco  only  may 
some  time  throw  off  the  habit,  but  when  one 
gets  to  be  such  a  victim  to  it  that  he  chews 
up  cigars  and  cigarettes  and  plugs  of  pipe 
tobacco,  it  seems  to  me  he  is  incurable.  It  is 
not  only  a  bad  habit  then  ;  it  amounts  to  a 
vice." 

Mr.  Pedagog  was  getting  apoplectic.  "  You 
know  well  enough  that  I  never  said  the  words 
you  attribute  to  me,"  he  said,  sternly. 

"Really,  Mr.  Pedagog," returned  the  Idiot, 


with  an  irritating  shake  of  his  head,  as  if  he 
were  confidentially  hinting  to  the  School- 
Master  to  keep  quiet — "  really  you  pain  me 
by  these  futile  denials.  Nobody  forced  you 
into  the  confession.  You  made  it  entirely  of 
your  own  volition.  Now  I  ask  you,  as  a 
man  and  brother,  what's  the  use  of  saying 
anything  more  about  it  ?  We  believe  you 
to  be  a  person  of  the  strictest  veracity,  but 
when  you  say  a  thing  before  a  tableful  of 
listeners  one  minute,  and  deny  it  the  next, 
we  are  forced  to  one  of  two  conclusions,  nei 
ther  of  which  is  pleasing.  We  must  con 
clude  that  either,  repenting  your  confession, 
you  sacrifice  the  truth,  or  that  the  habit  to 
which  you  have  confessed  has  entirely  de 
stroyed  your  perception  of  the  moral  ques 
tion  involved.  Undue  use  of  tobacco  has,  I 
believe,  driven  men  crazy.  Opium -eating 
has  destroyed  all  regard  for  truth  in  one 
whose  word  had  always  been  regarded  as 
good  as  a  government  bond.  I  presume  the 
undue  use  of  tobacco  can  accomplish  the 
same  sad  result.  By-the-way,  did  you  ever 
try  opium  ?" 

"  Opium  is  ruin,"  said  the  Doctor,  Mr. 
Pedagog's  indignation  being  so  great  that 
he  seemed  to  be  unable  to  find  the  words  he 


was  'evidently    desirous    of    hurling    at    the 
Idiot.  , 

"  It  is,  indeed,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I  knew 
a  man  once  who  smoked  one  little  pipeful  of 
it,  and,  while  under  its  influence,  sat  down  at 
his  table  and  wrote  a  story  of  the  supernat 
ural  order  that  was  so  good  that  everybody 
said  he  must  have  stolen  it  from  Poe  or 
some  other  master  of  the  weird,  and  now 
nobody  will  have  anything  to  do  with 
him.  Tobacco,  however,  in  the  sane  use  of 
it,  is  a  good  thing.  I  don't  know  of  anything 
that  is  more  satisfying  to  the  tired  man  than 
to  lie  back  on  a  sofa,  of  an  evening,  and  puff 
clouds  of  smoke  and  rings  into  the  air.  One 
of  the  finest  dreams  I  ever  had  came  from 
smoking.  I  had  blown  a  great  mountain  of 
smoke  out  into  the  room,  and  it  seemed  to 
become  real,  and  I  climbed  to  its  summit  and 
saw  the  most  beautiful  country  at  my  feet— 
a  country  in  which  all  men  were  happy, 
where  there  were  no  troubles  of  any  kind, 
where  no  whim  was  left  un gratified,  where 
jealousies  were  not,  and  where  every  man 
who  made  more  than  enough  to  live  on  paid 
the  surplus  into  the  common  treasury  for  the 
use  of  those  who  hadn't  made  quite  enough. 
It  was  a  national  realization  of  the  golden 


rule,  and  I  maintain  that  if  smoking  were  bad 
nothing  so  good,  even  in  the  abstract  form 
of  an  idea,  could  come  out  of  it." 

"That's  a  very  nice  thought,"  said  the 
Poet.  "  I'd  like  to  put  that  into  verse.  The 
idea  of  a  people  dividing  up  their  surplus 
of  wealth  among  the  less  successful  strug- 
glers  is  beautiful." 

"You  can  have  it,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  a 
pleased  smile.  (e*L  don't  write  poetry  of  that 
kind  myself  unless  I  work  hard,  and  I've 
found  that  when  the  poet  works  hard  he  pro 
duces  poems  that  read  hard.  You  are  wel 
come  to  it.  Another  time  I  was  dreaming 
over  my  cigar,  after  a  day  of  the  hardest  kind 
of  trouble  at  the  office.  Everything  had 
gone  wrong  with  me,  and  I  was  blue  as  indi 
go.  I  came  home  here,  lit  a  cigar,  and  threw 
myself  down  upon  my  bed  and  began  to  puff. 
I  felt  like  a  man  in  a  deep  pit,  out  of  which 
there  was  no  way  of  getting.  I  closed 
my  eyes  for  a  second,  and  to  all  intents  and 
purposes  I  lay  in  that  pit.  And  then  what 
did  tobacco  do  for  me?  Why,  it  lifted  me 
right  out  of  my  prison.  I  thought  I  was  sit 
ting  on  a  rock  down  in  the  depths.  The 
stars  twinkled  tantali/ingly  above  me.  They 
invited  me  to  freedom,  knowing  that  freedom 


"I   GRASPED    IT    IN   MY  TWO    HANDS ' 


was  not  attainable.  Then  I  blew  a  ring  of 
smoke  from  my  mouth,  and  it  began  to  rise 
slowly  at  first,  and  then,  catching  in  a  cur 
rent  of  air,  it  flew  upward  more  rapidly, 
widening  constantly,  until  it  disappeared  in 
the  darkness  above.  Then  I  had  a  thought. 
I  filled  my  mouth  as  full  of  smoke  as  possi 
ble,  and  blew  forth  the  greatest  ring  you  ever 
saw,  and  as  it  started  to  rise  I  grasped  it  in 
my  two  hands.  It  struggled  beneath  my 
weight,  lengthened  out  into  an  elliptical  link, 
and  broke,  and  let  me  down  with  a  dull  thud. 
Then  I  made  two  rings,  grasping  one  with 
my  left  hand  and  the  other  with  my  right— 

"  And  they  lifted  you  out  of  the  pit,  I  sup 
pose  ?"  sneered  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  I  do  not  say  that  they  did,"  said  the 
Idiot,  calmly.  "But  I  do  know  that  when 
I  opened  my  eyes  I  wasn't  in  the  pit  any 
longer,  but  up-stairs  in  my  hall-bedroom." 

"  How  awfully  mysterious  !"  said  the  Doc 
tor,  satirically. 

"  Well,  I  don't  approve  of  smoking,"  said 
Mr.  Whitechoker.  "I  agree  with  the  Lon 
don  divine  who  says  it  is  the  pastime  of  per 
dition.  It  is  not  prompted  by  natural  in 
stincts.  It  is  only  the  habit  of  artificial 
civilization.  Dogs  and  horses  and  birds  get 
along  without  it.  Why  shouldn't  man  ?" 


80 


"  Hear  !  hear  !"  cried  Mr.  Pedagog,  clap 
ping  his  hands  approvingly. 

"  Where  ?  where  ?"  put  in  the  Idiot. 
"  That's  a  great  argument.  Dog's  don't  put 
up  in  boarding-houses.  Is  the  boarding- 
house,'  therefore,  the  result  of  a  degraded, 
artificial  civilization  ?  I  have  seen  educated 
horses  that  didn't  smoke,  but  I  have  never 
seen  an  educated  horse,  or  an  uneducated 
one,  for  that  matter,  that  had  even  had  the 
chance  to  smoke,  or  the  kind  of  mouth  that 
would  enable  him  to  do  it  in  case  he  had  the 
chance.  I  have  also  observed  that  horses 
don't  read  books,  that  birds  don't  eat  mut 
ton-chops,  that  dogs  don't  go  to  the  opera, 
that  donkeys  don't  play  the  piano — at  least, 
four-legged  donkeys  don't — so  you  might  as 
well  argue  that  since  horses,  dogs,  birds,  and 
donkeys  get  along  without  literature,  music, 
mutton-chops,  and  piano-playing — 

"  You've  covered  music,"  put  in  the  Law 
yer,  who  liked  to  be  precise. 

"True;  but  piano -playing  isn't  always 
music,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  You  might 
as  well  argue  because  the  beasts  and  the 
birds  do  without  these  things  man  ought 
to.  Fish  don't  smoke,  neither  do  they  join 
the  police-force,  therefore  man  should  nei- 


"  PIANO-PLAYING    ISN'T    ALWAYS    MUSIC 


81 


ther  smoke  nor  become  a  guardian  of  the 
peace." 

"  Nevertheless  it  is  a  pastime  of  perdition," 
insisted  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  No,  it  isn't,"  retorted  the  Idiot.  "  Smok 
ing  is  the  business  of  perdition.  It  smokes 
because  it  has  to." 

"  There  !  there  !"  remonstrated  Mr.  Peda 
gog. 

"  You  mean  hear  !  hear  !   I  presume,"  said 

the  Idiot. 

"  I  mean  that  you  have  said  enough  !"  re 
marked  Mr.  Pedagog,  sharply. 

"Very  well,"  said  the  Idiot.  "If  I  have 
convinced  you  all  I  am  satisfied,  not  to  say 
gratified.  But  really,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  he  added, 
rising  to  leave  the  room,  "  if  I  were  you  I'd 
give  up  the  practice  of  chewing — 

"  Hold  on  a  minute,  Mr.  Idiot,"  said  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  interrupting.  He  was  desirous 
that  Mr.  Pedagog  should  not  be  further  irri 
tated.  "  Let  me  ask  you  one  question.  Does 
your  old  father  smoke  ?" 

"  No,"  said  the  Idiot,  leaning  easily  over 
the  back  of  his  chair—"  no.  What  of  it  ?" 

"  Nothing  at  all — except  that  perhaps  if 
he  could  get  along  without  it  you  might," 
suggested  the  clergyman. 


"  He  couldn't  get  along  without  it  if  he 
knew  what  good  tobacco  was,"  said  the  Idiot. 

"  Then  why  don't  you  introduce  him  to 
it?"  asked  the  Minister. 

"  Because  I  do  not  wish  to  make  him  un 
happy,"  returned  the  Idiot,  softly.  "  He 
thinks  his  seventy  years  have  been  the  hap 
piest  years  that  any  mortal  ever  had,  and  if 
now  in  his  seventy-first  year  he  discovered 
that  during  the  whole  period  of  his  manhood 
he  had  been  deprived  through  ignorance  of 
so  great  a  blessing  as  a  good  cigar,  he'd  be 
come  like  the  rest  of  us,  living  in  anticipa 
tion  of  delights  to  come,  and  not  finding  ap 
proximate  bliss  in  living  over  the  past.  Trust 
me,  my  dear  Mr.  Whitecboker,  to  look  after 
him.  He  and  my  mother  and  my  life  are  all 
I  have." 

The  Idiot  left  the  room,  and  Mr.  Pedagog 
put  in  a  greater  part  of  the  next  half-hour 
in  making  personal  statements  to  the  remain 
ing  boarders  to  the  effect  that  the  word  he 
used  was  eschewed,  and  not  the  one  attribu 
ted  to  him  by  the  Idiot. 

Strange  to  say,  most  of  them  were  already 
aware  of  that  fact. 


X 


"  THE  progress  of  invention  in  this  country 
has  been  very  remarkable,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog, 
as  he  turned  his  attention  from  a  scientific 
weekly  he  had  been  reading  to  a  towering 
pile  of  buckwheat  cakes  that  Mary  had  just 
brought  in.  "An  Englishman  has  just  dis 
covered  a  means  by  which  a  ship  in  distress 
at  sea  can  write  for  help  on  the  clouds." 

"  Extraordinary  !"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  It  might  be  more  so/'  observed  the  Idiot, 
coaxing  the  platterful  of  cakes  out  of  the 
School-Master's  reach  by  a  dextrous  move 
ment  of  his  hand.  "And  it  will  be  more  so 
some  day.  The  time  is  coming  when  the 
moon  itself  will  be  used  by  some  enterprising 
American  to  advertise  his  soap  business.  I 
haven't  any  doubt  that  the  next  fifty  years 
will  develop  a  stereopticon  by  means  of  which 
a  picture  of  a  certain  brand  of  cigar  may  be 
projected  through  space  until  it  seems  to  be 


s-l 


held  between  the  teeth  of  the  man  in  the 
moon,  with  a  printed  legend  below  it  stating 
that  this  is  Tooforftvers  Best,  Itolled  from 
Hand-made  Tobacco,  Warranted  not  to  Crock 
or  Fade,  and  for  sale  by  All  Tobacconists  at 
Eighteen  for  a  Dime" 

"  You  would  call  that  an  advance  in  in 
vention,  eh  ?"  asked  the  School-Master. 

"Why  not?"  queried  the  Idiot. 

"Do  you  consider  the  invention  which 
would  enable  man  to  debase  nature  to  the 
level  of  an  advertising  medium  an  ad 
vance  ?" 

"I  should  not  consider  the  use  of  the  moon 
for  the  dissemination  of  good  news  a  debase 
ment.  If  the  cigars  were  good — and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  some  one  will  yet  invent  a 
cheap  cigar  that  is  good — it  would  benefit 
the  human  race  to  be  acquainted  with  that 
fact.  I  think  sometimes  that  the  advertise 
ments  in  the  newspapers  and  the  periodicals 
of  the  day  are  of  more  value  to  the  public 
than  the  reading-matter,  so-called,  that  stands 
next  to  them.  I  don't  see  why  you  should 
sneer  at  advertising.  I  should  never  have 
known  you,  for  instance,  Mr.  Pedagog,  had 
it  not  been  for  Mrs.  Pedagog's  advertisement 
offering  board  and  lodging  to  single  gentle- 


"  THE    MOON    ITSELF    WILL    BE    USED 


85 


men  for  a  consideration.  Nor  would  you 
have  met  Mrs.  Smithers,  now  your  estimable 
wife,  yourself,  had  it  not  been  for  that  ad 
vertisement.  Why,  then,  do  you  sneer  at 
the  ladder  upon  which  you  have  in  a  sense 
climbed  to  your  present  happiness  ?  You 
are  ungrateful." 

"  How  you  do  ramify  !"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 
"I  believe  there  is  no  subject  in  the  world 
which  you  cannot  connect  in  some  way  or  an 
other  with  every  other  subject  in  the  world. 
A  discussion  of  the  merits  of  Shakespeare's 
sonnets  could  be  turned  by  your  dextrous 
tongue  in  five  minutes  into  a  quarrel  over 
the  comparative  merits  of  cider  and  cod-liver 
oil  as  beverages,  with  you,  the  chances  are, 
the  advocate  of  cod-liver  oil  as  a  steady 
drink." 

"Well,  I  must  say,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  a 
smile,  "it  has  been  my  experience  that  cod- 
liver  oil  is  steadier  than  cider.  The  cod-liver 
oils  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  absorbing 
have  been  evenly  vile,  while  the  ciders  that 
I  have  drank  have  been  of  a  variety  of  good 
ness,  badness,  and  indifferentness  which  has 
brought  me  to  the  point  where  I  never  touch 
it.  But  to  return  to  inventions,  since  you  de 
sire  to  limit  our  discussion  to  a  single  sub- 


86 


ject,  I  think  it  is  about  the  most  interesting 
field  of  speculation  imaginable." 

"  There  you  are  right,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog, 
approvingly.  "There  is  absolutely  no  limit 
to  the  possibilities  involved.  It  is  almost 
within  the  range  of  possibilities  that  some 
man  may  yet  invent  a  buckwheat  cake  that 
will  satisfy  your  abnormal  craving  for  that 
delicacy,  which  the  present  total  output  of 
this  table  seems  unable  to  do." 

Here  Mr.  Pedagog  turned  to  his  wife,  and 
added  :  "  My  dear,  will  you  request  the  cook 
hereafter  to  prepare  individual  cakes  for  us? 
The  Idiot  has  so  far  monopolized  all  that 
have  as  yet  appeared." 

"  It  appears  to  me,"  said  the  Idiot  at  this 
point,  "  that  you  are  the  rarnifier,  Mr.  Peda 
gog.  Nevertheless,  ramify  as  much  as  you 
please.  I  can  follow  you — at  a  safe  distance, 
of  course  —  in  the  discussion  of  anything, 
from  Edison  to  flapjacks.  I  think  your 
suggestion  regarding  individual  cakes  is  a 
good  one.  We  might  all  have  separate  grid 
dles,  upon  which  Gladys,  the  cook,  can  pre 
pare  them,  and  on  these  griddles  might  be 
cast  in  bold  relief  the  crest  of  each  member 
of  this  household,  so  that  every  man's  cake 
should,  by  an  easy  process  in  the  making, 


come  off  the  fire  indelibly  engraved  with  the 
evidence  of  its  destiny.  Mr.  Pedagog's  iron, 
for  instance,  might  have  upon  it  a  school-book 
rampant,  or  a  large  head  in  the  same  condi 
tion.  Mr.  Whitechoker's  cake -mark  might 
be  a  pulpit  rampant,  based  upon  a  vestryman 
dormant.  The  Doctor  might  have  a  lozengy 
shield  with  a  suitable  tincture,  while  my  ge 
nial  friend  who  occasionally  imbibes  could 
have  a  barry  shield  surmounted  by  a  small 
effigy  of  Gambrinus." 

"  You  appear  to  know  something  of  her 
aldry,"  said  the  poet,  with  a  look  of  surprise. 

"I  know  something  of  everything,"  said 
the  Idiot,  complacently. 

"  It's  a  pity  you  don't  know  everything 
about  something,"  sneered  the  Doctor. 

"  I  would  suggest,"  said  the  School-Master, 
dryly,  "  that  a  little  rampant  jackass  would 
make  a  good  crest  for  your  cakes." 

"That's  a  very  good  idea,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"I  do  not  know  but  that  a  jackass  rampant 
would  be  about  as  comprehensive  of  my 
virtues  as  anything  I  might  select.  The 
jackass  is  a  combination  of  all  the  best  qual 
ities.  He  is  determined.  He  minds  his  own 
business.  He  doesn't  indulge  in  flippant 
conversation.  He  is  useful.  lias  no  vices, 


88 


never  pretends  to  be  anything  but  a  jackass, 
and  most  respectfully  declines  to  be  ridden 
by  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry.  I  accept  the  sug 
gestion  of  Mr.  Pedagog  with  thanks.  But 
we  are  still  ramifying.  Let  us  get  back  to 
inventions.  Now  I  fully  believe  that  the 
time  is  coming  when  some  inventive  genius 
will  devise  a  method  whereby  intellect  can 
be  given  to  those  who  haven't  any.  I  be 
lieve  that  the  time  is  coming  when  the  secrets 
of  the  universe  wrill  be  yielded  up  to  man  by 
nature." 

"  And  then  ?"  queried  Mr.  Brief. 

*'  Then  some  man  will  try  to  improve  on 
the  secrets  of  the  universe.  He  will  try  to 
invent  an  apparatus  by  means  of  which  the 
rotation  of  the  world  may  be  made  faster  or 
slower,  according  to  his  will.  If  he  has  but 
one  day,  for  instance,  in  which  to  do  a  stated 
piece  of  work,  and  he  needs  two,  he  will  put 
on  some  patent  brake  and  slow  the  world  up 
until  the  distance  travelled  in  one  hour  shall 
be  reduced  one-half,  so  that  one  hour  under 
the  old  system  will  be  equivalent  to  two  ;  or 
if  he  is  anticipating  some  joy,  some  diversion 
in  the  future,  the  same  smart  person  will  find 
a  way  to  increase  the  speed  of  the  earth  so 
that  the  hours  will  be  like  minutes.  Then 


he'll  begin  fooling  with  gravitation,  and  he 
will  discover  a  new-fashioned  lodestone, 
which  can  be  carried  in  one's  hat  to  counter 
act  the  influence  of  the  centre  of  gravity 
when  one  falls  out  of  a  window  or  off  a 
precipice,  the  result  of  which  will  be  that 
the  person  who  falls  off  one  of  these  high 
places  will  drop  down  slowly,  and  not  with 
the  rapidity  which  at  the  present  day  is  re 
sponsible  for  the  dreadful  outcome  of  acci 
dents  of  that  sort.  Then,  finally—" 

"You  pretend  to  be  able  to  penetrate  to 
the  finality,  do  you  ?"  asked  the  Clergyman. 

"  Why  not  ?  It  is  as  easy  to  imagine  the 
finality  as  it  is  to  go  half-way  there,"  returned 
the  Idiot.  "Finally  he  will  tackle  some  ele 
mentary  principle  of  nature,  and  he'll  blow 
the  world  to  smithereens." 

There  was  silence  at  the  table.  This  at 
least  seemed  to  be  a  tenable  theory.  That 
man  should  have  the  temerity  to  take  liber 
ties  with  elementary  principles  was  quite 
within  reason,  man  being  an  animal  of  rare 
conceit,  and  that  the  result  would  bring  about 
destruction  was  not  at  all  at  variance  with 
probability. 

"I  believe  it's  happened  once  or  twice  al 
ready,"  said  the  Idiot. 


90 


"  Do  you  really?"  asked  Mr.  Pedagog,  with 
a  show  of  interest.  "  Upon  what  do  you  base 
this  belief?" 

"Well,  take  Africa,"  said  the  Idiot.  "Take 
North  America.  What  do  we  find  ?  We 
find  in  the  sands  of  the  Sahara  a  great  statue, 
which  we  call  the  Sphinx,  and  about  which 
we  know  nothing,  except  that  it  is  there  and 
that  it  keeps  its  mouth  shut.  We  find  mar 
vellous  creations  in  engineering  that  to-day 
surpass  anything  that  we  can  do.  The  Sphinx, 
when  discovered,  was  covered  by  sand.  Now 
I  believe  that  at  one  time  there  were  people 
much  further  advanced  in  science  than  our 
selves,  who  made  these  wonderful  things,  who 
knew  how  to  do  things  that  we  don't  even 
dream  of  doing,  and  I  believe  that  they,  like 
this  creature  I  have  predicted,  got  fooling 
with  the  centre  of  gravity,  and  that  the  world 
slipped  its  moorings  for  a  period  of  time,  dur 
ing  which  time  it  tumbled  topsy-turvey  into 
space,  and  that  banks  and  banks  of  sand  and 
water  and  ice  thrown  out  of  position  simply 
swept  on  and  over  the  whole  surface  of  the 
globe  continuously  until  the  earth  got  into 
the  grip  of  the  rest  of  the  universe  once  more 
and  started  along  in  a  new  orbit.  We  know 
that  where  we  are  high  and  dry  to-day  the 


91 


ocean  must  once  have  rolled.  We  know  that 
where  the  world  is  now  all  sunshine  and  flow 
ers  great  glaciers  stood.  What  caused  all 
this  change  ?  Nothing  else,  in  my  judg 
ment,  than  the  monkeying  of  man  with  the 
forces  of  nature.  The  poles  changed,  and  it 
wouldn't  surprise  me  a  bit  that,  if  the  north 
pole  were  ever  found  and  could  be  thawed 
out,  we  should  find  embedded  in  that  great 
sea  of  ice  evidences  of  a  former  civilization, 
just  as  in  the  Saharan  waste  evidences  of  the 
same  thing  have  been  found.  I  know  of  'a 
place  out  West  that  is  literally  strewn  with 
oyster-shells,  and  yet  no  man  living  has  the 
slightest  idea  how  they  came  there.  It  may 
have  been  the  Massachusetts  Bay  of  a  pre 
historic  time,  for  all  we3  know.  It  may  have 
been  an  antediluvian  Coney  Island,  for  all  the 
world  knows.  Who  shall  say  that  this  little 
upset  of  mine  found  here  an  oyster-bed, 
shook  all  the  oysters  out  of  their  bed  into 
space,  and  left  their  clothes  high  and  dry  in 
a  locality  which,  but  for  those  garments, 
would  seem  never  to  have  known  the  oyster 
in  his  prime  ?  Off  in  Westchester  County,  on 
the  top  of  a  high  hill,  lies  a  rock,  and  in  the 
uppermost  portion  of  that  rock  is  a  so-called 
pot-hole,  made  by  nothing  else  than  the  drop- 


ping  of  water  of  a  brook  and  the  swirling  of 
pebbles  therein.  It  is  now  beyond  the  reach 
of  anything  in  the  shape  of  water  save  that 
which  falls  from  the  heavens.  It  is  certain 
that  this  pot-hole  was  never  made  by  a  boy 
with  a  watering-pot,  by  a  hired  man  with  a 
hose,  by  a  workman  with  a  drill,  or  by  any 
rain-storm  that  ever  fell  in  Westchester  Coun 
ty.  There  must  at  some  time  or  another  have 
been  a  stream  there;  and  as  streams  do  not 
flow  uphill  and  bore  pot-holes  on  mountain- 
tops,  there  must  have  been  a  valley  there. 
Some  great  cataclysm  took  place.  For  that 
cataclysm  nature  must  be  held  responsible 
mainly.  But  what  prompted  nature  to  raise 
hob  with  Westchester  County  millions  of 
years  ago,  and  to  let  it  sleep  like  Rip  Van 
Winkle  ever  since  ?  Nature  isn't  a  freak. 
She  is  depicted  as  a  woman,  but  in  spite  of 
that  she  is  not  whimsical.  She  does  not  act 
upon  impulses.  There  must  have  been  some 
cause  for  her  behavior  in  turning  valleys  into 
hills,  in  transforming  huge  cities  into  wastes 
of  sand,  and  oyster-beds  into  shell  quarries; 
and  it  is  my  belief  that  man  was  the  contrib 
uting  cause.  He  tapped  the  earth  for  natural 
gas ;  he  bored  in  and  he  bored  out,  and  he 
bored  nature  to  death,  and  then  nature  rose 


it:; 


up  and  smote  him  and  his  cities  and  his  oys 
ter-beds,  and  she'll  do  it  again  unless  we  go 
slow." 

"There  is  a  great  deal  in  what  you  say," 
said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  Very  true,"  said  Mrs.  Pedagog.  "  But  I 
wish  he'd  stop  saying  it.  The  last  three 
dozen  cakes  have  got  cold  as  ice  while  he 
was  talking,  and  I  can't  afford  such  reckless 
waste." 

"Nor  we,  Mrs.  Pedagog,"  said  the  Idiot, 
with  a  pleasant  smile ;  "  for,  as  I  was  saying 
to  the  Bibliomaniac  this  morning,  your  buck 
wheat  cakes  are,  to  my  mind,  the  very  high 
est  development  of  our  modern  civilization, 
and  to  have  even  one  of  them  wasted  seems 
to  me  to  be  a  crime  against  Nature  herself, 
for  which  a  second,  third,  or  fourth  shaking 
up  of  this  earth  would  be  an  inadequate  pun 
ishment." 

This  remark  so  pleased  Mrs.  Pedagog  that 
she  ordered  the  cook  to  send  up  a  fresh  lot 
of  cakes;  and  the  guests,  after  eating  them, 
adjourned  to  their  various  duties  with  light 
hearts,  and  digestions  occupied  with  work  of 
great  importance. 


XI 


I  WONDER  what  would  have  happened  if 
Columbus  had  not  discovered  America?"  said 
the  Bibliomaniac,  as  the  company  prepared 
to  partake  of  the  morning  meal. 

"  He  would  have  gone  home  disappointed," 
said  the  Idiot,  with  a  look  of  surprise  on  his 
face,  which  seemed  to  indicate  that  in  his 
opinion  the  Bibliomaniac  was  very  dull-witted 
not  to  have  solved  the  problem  for  himself. 
"  He  would  have  gone  home  disappointed, 
and  we  would  now  be  foreigners,  like  most 
other  Americans.  Mr.  Pedagog  would  doubt 
less  be  instructing  the  young  scions  of  the 
aristocracy  of  Tipperary,  Mr.  Whitechoker 
would  be  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  Bib 
liomaniac  would  be  raising  bulbs  in  Holland, 
and—" 

"And  you  would  be  wandering  about  with 
the  other  wild  men  of  Borneo  at  the  present 
time,"  put  in  the  School-Master. 


'THE  BIBLIOMANIAC  WOULD  BE  RAISING  BULBS" 


"No,"  said  the  Idiot.  "Not  quite.  I 
should  be  dividing  my  time  up  between  Hol 
land,  France,  Switzerland,  and  Spain." 

"You  are  an  international  sort  of  Idiot, 
eh  ?"  queried  the  Lawyer,  with  a  chuckle  at 
his  own  wit. 

"  Say  rather  a  cosmopolitan  Idiot,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  Among  my  ancestors  I  number  in 
dividuals  of  various  nations,  though  I  sup 
pose  that  if  we  go  back  far  enough  we  were 
all  in  the  same  boat  as  far  as  that  is  con 
cerned.  One  of  my  great-great-grandfathers 
was  a  Scotchman,  one  of  them  wafe  a  Dutch 
man,  another  was  a  Spaniard,  a  fourth  was  a 
Frenchman.  What  the  others  were  I  don't 
know.  It's  a  nuisance  looking  up  one's  an 
cestors,  I  think.  They  increase  so  as  you  go 
back  into  the  past.  Every  man  has  had  two 
grandfathers,  four  great  -  grandfathers,  eight 
great-great-grandfathers,  sixteen  great-great- 
great-grandfathers,  thirty-two  fathers  raised 
to  the  fourth  power  of  great-grandness,  and 
so  on,  increasing  in  number  as  you  go  further 
back,  until  it  is  hardly  possible  for  any  one  to 
throw  a  brick  into  the  pages  of  history  with 
out  hitting  somebody  who  is  more  or  less  re 
sponsible  for  his  existence.  I  dare  say  there 
is  a  streak  of  Julius  Caesar  in  me,  and  I 


96 


haven't  a  doubt  that  if  our  friend  Mr.  Peda- 
gog  here  were  to  take  the  trouble  to.  investi 
gate,  he  would  find  that  Caesar  and  Cassius 
and  Brutus  could  be  numbered  among  his 
early  progenitors — and  now  that  I  think  of  it, 
I  must  say  that  in  my  estimation  he  is  an  un 
usually  amiable  man,  considering  how  diverse 
the  nature  of  these  men  were.  Think  of  it 
for  a  minute.  Here  a  man  unites  in  himself 
Caasar  and  Cassius  and  Brutus,  two  of  whom 
killed  the  third,  and  then,  having  quarrelled 
together,  went  out  upon  a  battle-field  and 
slaughtered  themselves,  after  making  extem 
poraneous  remarks,  for  which  this  miserable 
world  gives  Shakespeare  all  the  credit.  It's 
worse  than  the  case  of  a  friend  of  mine,  one 
of  whose  grandfathers  was  French  and  the 
other  German." 

"  How  did  it  affect  him  ?"  asked  Mr.  White- 
choker. 

"  It  made  him  distrust  himself,"  said  the 
Idiot,  with  a  smile,  "  and  for  that  reason  he 
never  could  get  on  in  the  world.  When  his 
Teutonic  nature  suggested  that  he  do  some 
thing,  his  Gallic  blood  would  rise  up  and  spoil 
everything,  and  vice  versa.  He  was  eternally 
quarrelling  with  himself.  He  was  a  victim  to 
internal  disorder  of  the  worst  sort." 


"  And  what,  pray,  finally  became  of  him  ?" 
asked  the  Clergyman. 

"He  shot  himself  in  a  duel,"  returned  the 
Idiot,  with  a  wink  at  the  genial  old  gentle 
man  who  occasionally  imbibed.  "It  was 
very  sad." 

"  I've  known  sadder  things,"  said  Mr.  Ped- 
agog,  wrearily.  "  Your  elaborate  jokes,  for 
instance.  They  are  enough  to  make  strong 
men  weep." 

"You  flatter  me,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  I  have  never  in  all  my  experience  as 
a  cracker  of  jests  made  a  man  laugh  until  he 
cried,  but  I  hope  to  some  day.  But,  realty, 
do  you  know  I  think  Columbus  is  an  im 
mensely  overrated  man.  If  you  pome  down 
to  it,  what  did  he  do  ?  He  went  out  to  sea 
in  a  ship  and  sailed  for  three  months,  and 
when  he  least  expected  it  ran  slam-bang  up 
against  the  Western  Hemisphere.  It  was 
like  shooting  at  a  barn  door  with  a  Gatling 
gun.  He  was  bound  to  hit  it  sooner  or 
later." 

"You  don't  give  him  any  credit  for  tenac 
ity  of  purpose  or  good  judgment,  then  ?" 
asked  Mr.  Brief. 

"  Of  course  I  do.  Plenty  of  it.  He  stuck 
to  his  ship  like  a  hero  who  didn't  know  how 


98 


to  swim.  His  judgment  was  great.  He  had 
too  much  sense  to  go  back  to  Spain  without 
any  news  of  something,  because  he  fully  un 
derstood  that  unless  he  had  something  to 
show  for  the  trip,  there  would  have  been  a 
great  laugh  on  Queen  Isabella  for  selling  her 
jewels  to  provide  for  a  ninety -day  yacht 
cruise  for  him  and  a  lot  of  common  sailors, 
which  would  never  have  done.  So  he  kept 
on  and  on,  and  finally  some  unknown  lookout 
up  in  the  bow  discovered  America.  Then  Co 
lumbus  went  home  and  told  everybody  that  if 
it  hadn't  been  for  his  own  eagle  eye  emigra 
tion  wouldn't  have  been  invented,  and  world's 
fairs  would  have  been  local  institutions.  Then 
they  got  uy  a  parade  in  which  the  King  and 
Queen  graciously  took  part,  and  Columbus  be 
came  a  great  man.  Meanwhile  the  unknown 
lookout  who  did  discover  the  land  was  knock 
ing  about  the  town  and  thinking  he  was  a  very 
lucky  fellow  to  get  an  extra  glass  of  grog.  It 
wasn't  anything  more  than  the  absolute  jus 
tice  of  fate  that  caused  the  new  land  to  be 
named  America  and  not  Columbia.  It  really 
ought  to  have  been  named  after  that  fellow 
up  in  the  bow." 

"But,  my  dear  Idiot,"  put  in  the  Biblio 
maniac,  "  the  scheme  itself  was  Columbus's 


own.  He  evolved  the  theory  that  the  earth 
is  round  like  a  ball." 

"To  quote  Mr.  Pedagog — "  began  the 
Idiot. 

"  You  can't  quote  me  in  your  own  favor," 
snapped  the  School-Master. 

"  Wait  until  I  have  finished,"  said  the  Id 
iot.  "I  was  only  going  to  quote  you  by  say 
ing  'Tutt !'  that's  all ;  and  so  I  repeat,  in  the 
words  of  Mr.  Pedagog,  tutt,  tutt !  Evolved 
the  theory  ?  Why,  man,  how  could  he  help 
evolving  the  theory  ?  There  was  the  sun  ris 
ing  in  the  east  every  morning  and  setting  in 
the  west  every  night.  What  else  was  there 
to  believe  ?  That  somebody  put  the  sun  out 
every  night,  and  sneaked  back  east  with  it 
under  cover  of  darkness  ?" 

"  But  you  forget  that  the  wise  men  of  the 
day  laughed  at  his  idea,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog, 
surveying  the  Idiot  after  the  fashion  of  a 
man  who  has  dealt  an  adversary  a  stinging 
blow. 

"  That  only  proves  what  I  have  always 
said,"  replied  the  Idiot.  "  Wise  men  can't 
find  fun  in  anything  but  stern  facts.  Wise 
men  always  do  laugh  at  truth.  Whenever  I 
advance  some  new  proposition,  you  sit  up 
there  next  to  Mrs.  Pedagog  and  indulge  in 


100 


tutt-tutterances  of  the  most  intolerant  sort. 
If  you  had  been  one  of  the  wise  men  of  Co- 
lumbus's  time  there  isn't  any  doubt  in  my 
mind  that  when  Columbus  said  the  earth 
was  round,  you'd  have  remarked  tutt,  tutt, 
in  Spanish."  There  was  silence  for  a  minute, 
and  then  the  Idiot  began  again.  "  There's 
another  point  about  this  whole  business  that 
makes  me  tired,"  he  said.  "It  only  goes  to 
prove  the  conceit  of  these  Europeans.  Here 
was  a  great  continent  inhabited  by  countless 
people.  A  European  comes  over  here  and  is 
said  to  be  the  discoverer  of  America  and  is 
glorified.  Statues  of  him  are  scattered  broad 
cast  all  over  the  world.  Pictures  of  him  are 
printed  in  the  newspapers  and  magazines. 
A  dozen  different  varieties  of  portraits  of 
him  are  printed  on  postage-stamps  as  big  as 
circus  posters — and  all  for  what?  Because 
he  discovered  a  land  that  millions  of  Indians 
had  known  about  for  centuries.  On  the  oth 
er  hand,  when  Columbus,  goes  back  to  Spain 
several  of  the  native  Americans  trust  their 
precious  lives  to  his  old  tubs.  One  of  these 
savages  must  have  been  the  first  American 
to  discover  Europe.  Where  are  the  statues  of 
the  Indian  who  discovered  Europe  ?  Where 
are  the  postage-stamps  showing  how  he  looked 


101 


on  the  day  when  Europe  first  struck  his  vis 
ion  ?  Where  is  anybody  spending  a  billion 
of  dollars  getting  up  a  world's  fair  in  com 
memoration  of  Lo's  discovery  of  Europe?" 

"He  didn't  know  it  was  Europe,"  said  the 
Bibliomaniac. 

"  Columbus  didn't  know  this  was  Ameri 
ca,"  retorted  the  Idiot.  "  In  fact,  Columbus 
didn't  know  anything.  He  didn't  know  any 
better  than  to  write  a  letter  to  Queen  Isabel 
la  and  mail  it  in  a  keg  that  never  turned  up. 
He  didn't  even  know  how  to  steer  his  old 
boat  into  a  real  solid  continent,  instead  of 
getting  ten  days  on  the  island.  He  was  an 
awfully  wise  man.  He  saw  an  island  swarm 
ing  with  Indians,  and  said,  *  Why,  this  must 
b*  India  !'  And  worst  of  all,  if  his  pictures 
mean  anything,  he  didn't  even  know  enough 
to  choose  his  face  and  stick  to  it.  Don't  talk 
Columbus  to  me  unless  you  want  to  prove 
that  luck  is  the  greatest  factor  of  success." 

"  Ill-luck  is  sometimes  a  factor  of  success," 
said  Mr.  Pedagog.  "  You  are  a  success  as 
an  Idiot,  which  appears  to  me  to  be  extreme 
ly  unfortunate." 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"I  adapt  myself  to  my  company,  and  of 


102 


"Then  you  are  a  school  -  master  among 
school-masters,  a  lawyer  among  lawyers,  and 
so  forth  ?"  queried  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  What  are  you  when  your  company  is 
made  up  of  widely  diverse  characters  ?" 
asked  Mr.  Brief  before  the  Idiot  had  a 
chance  to  reply  to  the  Bibliomaniac's  ques 
tion. 

"  I  try  to  be  a  widely  diverse  character  my 
self." 

"And,  trying  to  sit  on  many  stools,  fall 
and  become  just  an  Idiot,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  That's  according  to  the  way  you  look  at 
it.  I  put  my  company  to  the  test  in  the  cru 
cible  of  my  mind.  I  analyze  the  characters 
of  all  about  me,  and  whatever  quality  pre 
dominates  in  the  precipitate,  that  I  becorrfe. 
Thus  in  the  presence  of  my  employer  and  his 
office-boy  I  become  a  mixture  of  both — some 
thing  of  the  employer,  something  of  an  office- 
boy.  I  run  'errands  for  my  employer,  and 
boss  the  office-boy.  With  you  gentlemen  I 
go  through  the  same  process.  The  Biblio 
maniac,  the  School-Master,  Mr.  Brief,  and  the 
rest  of  you  have  been  cast  into  the  crucible, 
and  I  have  tried  to  approximate  the  result." 

"And  are  an  Idiot,"  said  the  School-Master. 

"It  is  your  own  name  for  me,  gentlemen," 


DIDN'T  KNOW  ENOUGH  TO  CHOOSK  HIS  OWN  FACE 


103 


returned  the  Idiot.  "I  presume  you  have 
recognized  your  composite  self,  and  have 
chosen  the  title  accordingly." 

"  You  were  a  little  hard  on  me  this  morn 
ing,  weren't  you?"  asked  the  genial  old  gen 
tleman  who  occasionally  imbibed,  that  even 
ing,  when  he  and  the  Idiot  were  discussing 
the  morning's  chat.  "  I  didn't  like  to  say 
anything  about  it,  but  I  don't  think  you 
ought  to  have  thrown  me  into  the  crucible 
with  the  rest." 

"I  wish  you  had  spoken,"  said  the  Idiot, 
warmly.  "  It  would  have  given  me  a  chance 
to  say  that  the  grain  of  sense  that  once  or 
twice  a  year  leavens  the  lump  of  my  idiocy  is 
directly  due  to  the  ingredient  furnished  by 
yourself.  Here's  to  you,  old  man.  If  you 
and  I  lived  alone  together,  what  a  wise  man 
I  should  be  !" 

And  then  the  genial  old  gentleman  went  to 
the  cupboard  and  got  out  a  bottle  of  port-wine 
that  he  had  been  preserving  in  cobwebs  for 
ten  years.  This  he  opened,  and  as  he  did  so 
he  said,  "I've  been  keeping  this  for  years, 
my  boy.  It  was  dedicated  in  my  youth  to 
the  thirst  oft  the  first  man  who  truly  appre 
ciated  me.  Take  it  all." 


104 


"I'll  divide  with  you,"  returned  the  Idiot, 
witE  a'smile.  "  For  really,  old  fellow,  I  think 
yOU — an — I  think  you  appreciate  yourself  as 
much  as  I  do." 


XII 


"  I  WONDER  what  it  costs  to  run  a  flat  ?" 
said  the  Idiot,  stirring  his  coffee  with  the 
salt-spoon  —  a  proceeding  which  seemed  to 
indicate  that  he  was  thinking  of  something 
else. 

"  Don't  you  keep  an  expense  account  ?" 
asked  the  Bibliomaniac,  slyly. 

"  Hee-hee  !"  laughed  Mrs.  Pedagog. 

"First -rate  joke,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  a 
smile.  "But  really,  now,  I  should  like  to 
know  for  how  little  an  apartment  could  be 
run.  I  am  interested." 

Mrs.  Pedagog  stopped  laughing  at  once. 
The  Idiot's  words  were  ominous.  She  did 
not  always  like  his  views,  but  she  did  like 
his  money,  and  she  was  not  at  all  anxious  to 
lose  him  as  a  boarder. 

"  It's  very  expensive,"  she  said,  firmly.  "  I 
shouldn't  ever  advise  any  one  to  undertake 
living  in  a  flat.  Rents  are  high.  Butcher 


106 


bills  are  enormous,  because  the  butchers  have 
to  pay  commissions,  not  only  to  the  cook,  so 
that  she'll  use  twice  as  much  lard  as  she  can, 
and  give  away  three  or  four  times  as  much 
to  the  poor  as  she  ought,  but  janitors  have  to 
be  seen  to,  and  elevator-boys,  and  all  that. 
Groceries  come  high  for  the  same  reason. 
Oh,  no !  Flat  life  isn't  the  life  for  anybody, 
I  say.  Give  me  a  good,  first-class  boarding- 
house.  Am  I  not  right,  John  ?" 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog.  "  Every 
time.  I  lived  in  a  flat  once,  and  it  was  an 
awful  nuisance.  Above  me  lived  a  dancing- 
master  who  gave  lessons  at  every  hour  of  the 
day  in  the  room  directly  over  my  study,  so 
that  I  was  always  being  disturbed  at  my 
work,  while  below  me  was  a  music- teacher 
who  was  practising  all  night,  so  that  I  could 
hardly  sleep.  Worst  of  all,  on  the  same  floor 
with  me  was  a  miserable  person  of  convivial 
tendencies,  who  always  mistook  my  door  for 
his  when  he  came  home  after  midnight,  and 
who  gave  some  quite  estimable  people  two 
floors  below  to  believe  that  it  was  I,  and 
not  he,  who  sang  comic  songs  between  three 
and  four  o'clock  in  the  morning.  There  has 
not  been  too  much  love  lost  between  the 
Idiot  and  myself,  but  I  cannot  be  so  vin- 


JANIIOKS    HAVE   TO    BE    SEEN    TO 


107 


clictive  as  to  recommend  him  to  live  in  a 
flat." 

"  I  can  bear  testimony  to  the  same  effect," 
put  in  Mr.  Brief,  who  was  two  weeks  in  ar 
rears,  and  anxious  to  conciliate  his  landlady. 

"  Testimony  to  the  effect  that  Mr.  Pedagog 
sang  comic  songs  in  the  early  morning  ?" 
said  the  Idiot.  "  Nonsense  !  I  don't  Be 
lieve  it.  I  have  lived  in  this  house  for  two 
years  with  Mr.  Pedagog,  and  I've  never 
heard  him  raise  his  voice  in  song  yet." 

"  I  didn't  mean  anything  of  the  sort,"  re 
torted  Mr.  Brief.  "You  know  I  didn't." 

"  Don't  apologize  to  me,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"Apologize  to  Mr.  Pedagog.  He  is  the 
man  you  have  wronged." 

"  What  did  he  say  ?"  put  in  Mr.  Pedagog, 
with  a  stern  look  at  Mr.  Brief.  "  I  didn't 
hear  what  he  said." 

"  I  didn't  say  anything,"  said  the  lawyer, 
"  except  that  I  could  bear  testimony  to  the 
effect  that  your  experience  with  flat  life  was 
similar  to  mine.  This  young  person,  with 
his  customary  nerve,  tries  to  make  it  appear 
that  I  said  you  sang  comic  songs  in  the  early 
morning." 

"  I  try  to  do  nothing  of  the  sort,"  s'aid  the 
Idiot.  "  I  simply  expressed  my  belief  that 


108 


in  spite  of  what  you  said  Mr.  Fed  agog  was 
innocent,  and  I  do  so  because  my  experience 
with  him  has  taught  me  that  he  is  not  the 
kind  of  man  who  would  do  that  sort  of 
thing.  He  has  neither  time,  voice,  nor  in 
clination.  He  has  an  ear — two  of  them,  in 
fact — and  an  impressionable  mind,  but — " 

"  Oh,  tutt !"  interrupted  the  School-Master. 
"  When  I  need  a  defender,  you  may  spare 
yourself  the  trouble  of  flying  to  my  rescue." 

"  I  know  I  may"  said  the  Idiot,  "  but  with 
me  it's  a  question  of  can  and  can't.  I'm  will 
ing  to  attack  you  personally,  but  while  I  live 
no  other  shall  do  so.  Wherefore  I  tell  Mr. 
Brief  plainly,  and  to  his  face,  that  if  he  says 
you  ever  sang  a  comic  song  he  says  what  is 
not  so.  You  might  hum  one,  but  sing  it — 
never  !" 

"  We  were  talking  of  flats,  I  believe,"  said 
Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"Yes,"  said  the  Idiot,  "and  these  persons 
have  changed  it  from  flat  talk  to  sharp  talk." 

"  Well,  anyhow,"  put  in  Mr.  Brief,  "  I  lived 
in  a  flat  once,  and  it  was  anything  but  pleas 
ant.  I  lost  a  case  once  for  the  simple  and 
only  reason  that  I  lived  in  a  flat.  It  was  a 
case  that  required  a  great  deal  of  strategy 
on  my  part,  and  I  invited  my  client  to  my 


109 


home  to  unfold  my  plan  of  action.  I  got  in 
terested  in  the  scheme  as  I  unfolded  it,  and 
spoke  in  my  usual  impassioned  manner,  as 
though  addressing  a  jury,  and,  would  you 
believe  it,  the  opposing  counsel  happened  to 
be  visiting  a  friend  on  the  next  floor,  and  my 
eloquence  floated  up  through  the  air-shaft, 
and  gave  our  whole  plan  of  action  away. 
We  were  routed  on  the  point  we  had  sup 
posed  would  pierce  the  enemy's  armor  and 
lay  him  at  our  feet,  for  the  wholly  simple 
reason  that  that  abominable  air-shaft  had 
made  my  strategic  move  a  matter  of  public 
knowledge." 

"That's  a  good  idea  for  a  play,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  A  roaring  farce  could  be  built  up 
on  that  basis.  Villain  and  accomplice  on 
one  floor,  innocent  victim  oft  floor  above. 
Plot  floats  up  air-shaft.  Innocent  victim 
overhears  ;  villain  and  accomplice  say  '  ha 
ha '  for  three  acts  and  take  a  back  seat  in  the 
fourth,  with  a  grand  transformation  showing 
the  conspirators  in  the*county  jail  as  a  finale. 
Write  it  up  with  lots  of  live-stock  wandering 
in  and  out,  bring  in  janitors  and  elevator- 
boys  and  butchers,  show  up  some  of  the  hu 
mors  of  flat  life,  if  there  be  any  such,  call  it 
A  Hole  in  the  Flat,  and  put  it  on  the  stage. 


110 


Nine  hundred  nights  is  the  very  shortest  run 
it  could  have,  which  at  fifty  dollars  a  night 
for  the  author  is  $45,000  in  good  hard  dollars. 
Mr.  Poet,  the  idea  is  yours  for  a  fiver.  Say 
the  word." 

"Thanks,"  said  the  Poet,  with  a  smile  ;  "  I'm 
not  a  dramatist." 

"Then  I'll, have  to  do  it  myself,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  And  if  I  do,  good-bye  Shakespeare." 

"That's  so,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog.  Nothing 
could  more  effectually  ruin  the  dramatic  art 
than  to  have  you  write  a  play.  People,  see 
ing  your  work,  would  say,  here,  this  will  nev 
er  do.  The  stage  must  be  discouraged  at  all 
costs.  A  hypocrite  throws  the  ministry  into 
disgrace,  an  ignoramus  brings  shame  upon 
education,  and  an  unpopular  lawyer  gives  the 
bar  a  bad  natne.  I  think  you  are  just  the 
man  to  ruin  Shakespeare." 

"  Then  I'll  give  up  my  ambition  to  become 
a  playwright  and  stick  to  idiocy,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  But  to  come  back  to  flats.  Your 
feeling  in  regard  to  them  is  entirely  different 
from  that  of  a  friend  of  mine,  who  has  lived 
in  one  for  ten  years.  He  thinks  flat  life  is 
ideal.  His  children  can't  fall  down-stairs,  be 
cause  there  aren't  any  stairs  to  fall  down. 
His  roof  never  leaks,  because  he  hasn't  any 


: 


MY    ELOQUENCE    FLOATED    UP   THE   AIR  SHAFT " 


Ill 


roof  to  leak  ;  and  when  he  and  his  family 
want  to  go  off  anywhere,  all  he  has  to  do  is 
to  lock  his  front  door  and  go.  Burglars 
never  climb  into  his  front  window,  because 
they  are  all  eight  flights  up.  Damp  cellars 
don't  trouble  him,  because  they  are  too  far 
down  to  do  him  any  injury,  even  if  they  over 
flow.  The  cares  of  house-keeping  are  reduced 
to  a  minimum.  His  cook  doesn't  spend  all 
her  time  in  the  front  area  flirting  with  the 
postman,  because  there  isn't  any  front  area 
to  his  flat  ;  and  in  a  social  way  his  wife  is 
most  delightfully  situated,  because  most  of 
her  friends  live  in  the  same  building,  and  in 
stead  of  having  to  hire  a  carriage  to  go  calling 
in,  all  she  has  to  do  is  to  take  the  elevator 
and  go  from  one  floor  to  another.  If  he 
pines  for  a  change  of  scene,  he  is  high  enough 
up  in  the  air  to  get  it  by  looking  out  of  his 
windows,  over  the  tops  of  other  buildings, 
into  the  green  fields  to  the  north,  or  looking 
westward  into  the  State  of  New  Jersey.  In 
stead  of  taking  a  drive  through  the  Park,  or 
a  walk,  all  he  and  his  wife  need  to  do  is  to 
take  a  telescope  and  follow  some  little  sylvan 
path  with  their  eyes.  Then,  as  for  expense, 
he  finds  that  he  saves  money  by  means  of  a 
co-operative  scheme.  For  instance,  if  he 


112 


wants  sbad  for  dinner,  and  he  and  his  wife 
cannot  eat  a  whole  one,  he  goes  shares  on  the 
shad  and  its  cost  with  his  neighbors  above 
and  below." 

"  Yes,  and  his  neighbors  above  and  below 
borrow  tea  and  eggs  and  butter  and  ice  and 
other  things  whenever  they  run  short,  so  that 
in  that  way  he  loses  all  he  saves,"  said  Mr. 
Pedagog,  resolved  not  to  give  in. 

"  He  does  if  he  isn't  smart,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  I  thought  of  that  myself,  and  asked  him 
about  it,  and  he  told  me  that  he  kept  ac 
count  of  all  that,  and  always  made  it  a  point 
after  some  neighbor  had  borrowed  two  pounds 
of  butter  from  him  to  send  in  before  the  week 
was  over  and  borrow  three  pounds  of  butter 
from  the  neighbor.  So  far  his  books  show 
that  he  is  sixteen  pounds  of  butter,  seven 
pounds  of  tea,  one  bottle  of  vanilla  extract, 
and  a  ton  of  ice  ahead  of  the  whole  house. 
He  is  six  eggs  and  a  box  of  matches  be 
hind  in  his  egg  and  match  account,  but  under 
the  circumstances  I  think  he  can  afford  it." 

"  But,"  said  Mrs.  Pedagog,  anxious  tp  know 
the  worst,  "  why — er — why  are  you  so  inter 
ested  ?" 

"Well,"  said  the  Idiot,  slowly,  "  I— er— I 
am  contemplating  a  change,  Mrs.  Pedagog — 


113 


a  change  that  would  fill  me— I  say  it  sincere 
ly,  too — with  regret  if—  The  Idiot  paused 
a  minute,  and  his  eye  swept  fondly  about  the 
table.  His  voice  was  getting  a  little  husky 
too,  Mr.  Whitechoker  noticed.  "  It  would 
fill  me  with  regret,  I  say,  if  it  were  not  that 
in  taking  up  house-keeping  I  am  —  I  am  to 
have  the  assistance  of  a  better-half." 

"  What  ?"  cried  the  Bibliomaniac.  "  You  ? 
You  are  going  to  be — to  be  married  ?" 

"  Why  not  ?"  said  the  Idiot.  "  Imitation 
is  the  sincerest  flattery.  Mr.  Pedagog  mar 
ries,  and  I  am  going  to  flatter  him  as  sincere 
ly  as  I  can  by  following  in  his  footsteps." 

"  May  I — may  we  ask  to  whom  ?"  asked 
Mrs.  Pedagog,  softly. 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  Idiot.  «  To  Mr.  Bar 
low's  daughter.  Mr.  Barlow  is — or  was — 
my  employer." 

"  Was?  Is  lie  not  now  ?  Are  you  going 
out  of  business  ?"  asked  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"No  ;  but,  you  see,  when  I  went  to  see 
Mr.  Barlow  in  the  matter,  he  told  me  that  he 
liked  me  very  much,  and  he  had  no  doubt  I 
would  make  a  good  husband  for  his  daugh 
ter,  but,  after  all,  he  added  that  I  was  noth 
ing  but  a  confidential  clerk  on  a  small  salary, 
and  he  thought  his  daughter  could  do  better." 


114 


"  She  couldn't  find  a  better  fellow,  Mr. 
Idiot,"  said  Mrs.  Pedagog,  and  Mr.  Pedagog 
rose  to  the  occasion  by  nodding  his  entire 
acquiescence  in  the  statement. 

"  Thank  you  very  much,"  said  the  Idiot." 
"  That  was  precisely  what  I  told  Mr.  Barlow, 
and  I  suggested  a  scheme  to  him  by  which 
his  sole  objection  could  be  got  around." 

"  You  would  start  in  business  for  yourself  ?" 
said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"In  a  sense,  yes,"  said  the  Idiot.  "Only 
the  way  I  put  it  was  that  a  good  confidential 
clerk  would  make  a  good  partner  for  him, 
and  he,  after  thinking  it  over,  thought  I  was 
right." 

"  It  certainly  was  a  characteristically  novel 
way  out  of  the  dilemma,"  said  Mr.  Brief, 
with  a  smile. 

"  I  thought  so  myself,  and  so  did  he,  so  it 
was  all  arranged.  On  the  1st  of  next  month 
I  enter  the  firm,  and  on  the  15th  I  am — ah — 
to  be  married." 

The  company  warmly  congratulated  the 
Idiot  upon  his  good  -  fortune,  and  he  shortly 
left  the  room,  more  overcome  by  their  felici 
tations  than  he  had  been  by  their  arguments 
in  the  past. 

The  few  days  left  passed  quickly  by,  and 


115 


there  came  a  breakfast  at  Mrs.  Pedagog's 
house  that  was  a  mixture  of  joy  and  sadness 
—joy  for  his  happiness,  sadness  that  that 
table  should  know  the  Idiot  no  more. 

Among  the  wedding-gifts  was  a  handsome 
ly  bound  series  of  volumes,  including  a  cy 
clopaedia,  a  dictionary,  and  a  little  tome  of 
poems,  the  first  output  of  the  Poet.  These 
came  together,  with  a  card  inscribed,  "  From 
your  Friends  of  the  Breakfast  Table,"  of 
whom  the  Idiot  said,  when  Mrs.  Idiot  asked 
for  information  : 

"  They,  rny  dear,  next  to  yourself  and  my 
parents,  are  the  dearest  friends  I  ever  had. 
We  must  have  them  up  to  breakfast  some 
morning." 

"  Breakfast  ?"  queried  Mrs.  Idiot. 

"Yes,  my  dear,"  he  replied,  simply.  "I 
should  be  afraid  to  meet  them  at  any  other 
meal.  I  am  always  at  my  best  at  breakfast, 
and  they — well,  they  never  are." 


THE  END 


BY  JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 


THE  WA'TER  GHOST,  and  Others.     Illustrated. 
i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  25. 

The  funny  side  of  the  ghost  genre  is  brought  out  with 
originality,  and,  considering  the  morbidity  that  surrounds 
the  subject,  it  is  a  wholesome  thing  to  offer  the  public  a 
series  of  tales  letting  in  the  sunlight  of  laughter. — Hart 
ford  Courant. 

Certainly  the  brightest  and  most  amusing  collection, 
if  one  can  imagine  ghost  stories  amusing,  which  we  have 
yet  had  from  this  author's  hand.  .  .  .  All  very  good  and 
ve*y  original. — Interior,  Chicago. 

THREE  WEEKS  IN  POLITICS.  Illustrated.  32010, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  50  cents. 

Mr.  Bangs's  book  is  a  lively  little  satire  on  ward  politics, 
born  of  personal  experience,  and  is  very  clever  in  its 
sallies. — Springfield  Repriblican. 

The  funny  story  is  most  graphically  told,  and  he  who 
can  read  this  narrative  of  a  campaigner's  trials  without 
laughing  must  be  a  stoic  indeed. — Philadelphia  Bulletin. 

COFFEE  AND  REPARTEE.     Illustrated.     32mo, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  50  cents. 

Is  delightfully  free  from  conventionality ;  is  breezy, 
witty,  and  possessed  of  an  originality  both  genial  and  re 
freshing  — Saturday  Evening  Gazette,  Boston. 

This  little  book  may  be  cordially  recommended  to 
those  who  desire  a  complete  specimen  of  recent  humor. 
.  .  .  Mr.  Bangs  is  to  be  congratulated  upon  an  exception 
ally  nice  performance  in  the  field  of  wit  and  humor. — 
Living  Church,  Chicago. 

PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

(XJ3  For  sale  bv  all  booksellers,  or  -will  be  sent  by  the  publish 
ers,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Canada, 
or  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


BY   BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 


VIGNETTES  OF  MANHATTAN.  Illustrated  by 
W.  T.  SMEDLEY.  Post  8vo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  50. 

THE  STORY  OF  A  STORY,  and  Other  Stories.  Il 
lustrated.  i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  25.  ("Har 
per's  Am  erican  Story-Tellers. ") 

STUDIES  OF  THE  STAGE.  With  Portrait.  i6mo, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  $1  oo.  (In  the  Series  "  Harper's 
American  Essayists.") 

AMERICANISMS  AND  BRITICISMS,  with  Other 
Essays  on  Other  Isms.  With  Portrait.  i6mo,  Cloth, 
Ornamental,  $i  oo.  (In  the  Series  "  Harper's  Ameri 
can  Essayists.") 

THE  ROYAL  MARINE.  An  Idyl  of  Narragansett 
Pier.  Illustrated.  Square  i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental, 
$i  oo.  (In  the  Series  "Harper's  Little  Novels.") 

THIS  PICTURE  AND  THAT.  A  Comedy.  Illus 
trated.  32mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  50  cents. 

THE  DECISION  OF  THE  COURT.  A  Comedy. 
Illustrated.  321110,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  50  cents. 

IN  THE  VESTIBULE  LIMITED.  A  Story.  Illus 
trated.  32ino,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  50  cents. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 


For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  mill  be  sent  by  the  publish 
ers,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Canada, 
or  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


HARPER'S    AMERICAN    ESSAYISTS. 

With  Portraits.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  oo  each. 


A    LITTLE    ENGLISH     GALLERY.      By   LOUISE 
IMOGEN  GUINEY. 

LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  SILHOUETTES.     By 

HjALMAR     HjORTH    BOYESEN. 

STUDIES    OF   THE   STAGE.      By  BRANDER  MAT 
THEWS. 

AMERICANISMS  AND   BRITICISMS,  with  Other 
Essays  on  Other  Isms.     By  BKANDER  MATTHEWS. 

AS  WE  GO.     By  CHARLES  DUDLEY  WAKNER.     With 
Illustrations. 

AS    WE    WERE    SAYING.      By  CHARLES  DUDLEY 
WARNER.     With  Illustrations. 

FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.     By  GEORGE  WILLIAM 
CURTIS. 

FROM   THE  EASY  CHAIR.      Second  Series.      By 
GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS. 

FROM   THE   EASY   CHAIR.       Third  Series.      By 
GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS. 

CRITICISM  AND  FICTION.      By  WILLIAM  DEAN 

HOWELLS. 

FROM  THE  BOOKS  OF  LAURENCE  HUTTON. 
CONCERNING  ALL  OF  US-      By  THOMAS  WENT- 

WORTH  HlGGINSON. 

THE   WORK   OF    JOHN    RUSKIN.     By  CHARLES 

WALDSTEIN. 

PICTURE  AND  TEXT.     By  HENRY  JAMES.     With 
Illustrations. 

PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

^f  For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  -will  be  sent  by  the  publish 
ers,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Canada, 
or  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


BY  CONSTANCE   F.  WOOLSON. 

HORACE  CHASE.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  25. 
JUPITER  LIGHTS.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  25. 
EAST  ANGELS.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  25. 
ANNE.     Illustrated.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  25. 
FOR  THE  MAJOR.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  oo. 
CASTLE  NOWHERE.     i6mo,  Cloth,  $r  oo. 
RODMAN  THE  KEEPER.      i6mo,  Cloth,  $i  oo. 


One  of  the  most  remarkable  qualities  of  Miss  Wool- 
son's  work  was  its  intense  picturesqueness.  Few  writers 
have  shown  equal  beauty  in  expressing  the  poetry  of 
landscape. — Spring-field  Republican, 

Characterization  is  Miss  Woolson's  forte.  Her  men 
and  women  are  original,  breathing,  and  finely  contrasted 
creations. — Chicago  Tribune. 

Delightful  touches  justify  those  who  see  many  points 
of  analogy  between  Miss  Woolson  and  George  Eliot. — 
N.  Y.  Times. 

Miss  Woolson's  power  of  describing  natural  scenery 
and  strange,  out-of-the-way  phases  of  American  life  is 
undoubted.  One  cannot  well  help  being  fascinated  by 
her  stories.— Churchman,  N.  Y. 

Miss  Woolson  is  one  of  the  few  novelists  of  the  day 
who  know  how  to  make  conversation,  how  to  individual 
ize  the  speakers,  how  to  exclude  rabid  realism  without 
falling  into  literary  formality.—  N.  Y.  Tribune. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 
ny  of  the  above  works  will  be  sent  by  mail,  post 


age  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Canada, 
Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


BY  MARY  E.  WILK1NS. 


PEMBROKE.      A   Novel.      Illustrated.      i6mo, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  50. 

JANE  FIELD.     A  Novel.     Illustrated.     i6mo, 
Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  25. 

GILES  COREY,  YEOMAN.    A  Play.     Illustrated. 
32mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  50  cents. 

A  NEW  ENGLAND   NUN,  and  Other  Stories. 
i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  25. 

A    HUMBLE    ROMANCE,    and    Other    Stories. 
i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  25. 

YOUNG  LUCRETIA,  and  Other  Stories.      Illus 
trated.     Post  8vo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  $i  25. 

Always  there  is  a  freedom  from  commonp.ace,  and  a 
power  to  hold  the  interest  to  the  close,  which  is  owing, 
not  to  a  trivial  ingenuity,  but  to  the  spell  which  her  per 
sonages  cast  over  the  reader's  mind  as  soon  as  they  come 
within  his  ken. — Atlantic  Monthly. 

A  gallery  of  striking  studies  in  the  humblest  quarters 
of  American  country  life.  No  one  has  dealt  with  this 
kind  of  life  better  than  Miss  Wilkins.  Nowhere  are 
there  to  be  found  such  faithful,  delicately  drawn,  sympa 
thetic,  tenderly  humorous  pieces. — N.  Y.  Tribune. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK.# 

(jgp^  For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  sent  by  mail, 
postage  prepaid,  t%  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Can 
ada,  or  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


THE    ODD    NUMBER    SERIES. 

i6mo,  Cloth,  Ornamental. 


PARISIAN  POINTS  OF  VIEW.  By  LUDOVIC  HA- 
LEVY.  Translated  by  EDITH  V.  B.  MATTHEWS.  $i  oo 

DAME  CARE.  By  HERMANN  SUDERMANN.  Trans 
lated  by  BERTHA  OVERBECK.  $i  oo. 

TALES  OF  TWO  COUNTRIES.  By  ALEXANDER 
KIELLAND.  Translated  by  WILLIAM  ARCHER.  $1  oo. 

TEN  TALES  BY  FRANQOIS  COPPE"E.  Trans 
lated  by  WALTER  LEARNED.  50  Illustrations.  $125. 

MODERN  GHOSTS     Selected  and  Translated.  $i  oo. 

THE  HOUSE  BY  THE  MEDLAR-TREE.  By 
GIOVANNI  VERGA.  Translated  from  the  Italian  by 
MARY  A.  CRAIG.  $i  co. 

PASTELS  IN  PROSE.  Translated  by  STUART  MER 
RILL.  150  Illustrations.  $i  25. 

MARIA:  A  Sou'.h  American  Romance.  By  JORGE 
ISAACS.  Translated  by  ROLLO  OGDEN.  $i  oo. 

THE  ODD  NUMBER.  Thirteen  Tales  by  GUY  DE 
MAUPASSANT.  The  Translation  by  JONATHAN 
STURGES.  $i  oo. 

•      Other  volumes  to  follow. 


^PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  Ntw  YORK. 
flgif^  Any  of  the  above  works  -will  be  sent  by  mail,  post 
age  prepaid,  to  any  part  of  the  United  States,  Canada, 
or  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


STAMPED  BELOW 


AN     INITIAL     FINE     OF     25     CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


17  1932 

*OV    18  183* 
NOV  30  1935 


APR  *'K 


fiPS  11 332 

IAY  4. 


EB  0  1931 : 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


